


'Tis the Damn Season (hear me out)

by IMaketheMonsters



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas, F/M, Found Family, I have been consumed by this fandom, I swear a lot so they do too, M/M, Slow Burn, home for the holidays!au, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28162398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IMaketheMonsters/pseuds/IMaketheMonsters
Summary: There’s nothing like coming home the week of Christmas and discovering you’re still in love with a worm-eater.OR: the Home for the Holidays!AU that no one asked for
Relationships: Alex & Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 112
Kudos: 266





	1. Partie Elves are Santa's special helpers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late to the party, I know. I was so busy with work that I didn't watch JATP for the first time until two weeks ago, and now I've binged the whole thing three or four times and torn through half the fandom content on this website. I took a break from writing for a year or so, but there's suddenly a bunch of half-baked AU ideas in my documents folder and I churned out nearly 4k for this first chapter. 
> 
> I was born and raised in Vancouver, so when I found out they filmed here and that Charlie is Canadian I couldn't help myself. I'm running with the idea of Julie at UBC, she'd honestly fit in really well.  
> This is extremely under-edited but hope you enjoy!

**December 20 th, 2020. 17:00. 5 Days to Christmas.**

Julie Molina isn’t quite sure where this cabbie found the confidence to fully jam out to Mariah Carrie’s “All I Want for Christmas” while she’s sitting in the backseat, but she isn’t going to complain about it. Part of her kind of wants to go live on Instagram to showcase what looks like a waist-up rendition of the Mean Girls Christmas choreography, but that would mean stopping what is undoubtedly this person’s _moment_ to ask for permission. If she’s learned anything from growing up in East Hollywood, it’s that interrupting a diva at work is the ultimate sin.

She does take a video to send to Reggie, though, along with several pictures of the sign strapped to the back of the passenger seat that reads, “CHRISTMAS PARTIE MOBILE! WITH KANDIE KANE THE NAUGHTY ELF”. She’d be a bad sister if she didn’t.

His only response, “THAT’S FUCKING INCREDIBLE LMAO,” comes just as the cabbie turns off the main road into her neighbourhood, so Julie taps out a quick heads up before slipping her phone back into her pocket and digging for her wallet. She tips Kandie Kane an extra ten dollars for entertainment value, grinning widely as they shimmy their red and green tinsel boa in thanks before slipping out of the backseat to grab her suitcase.

“Holy shit! You weren’t kidding!” Reggie comes sprinting down the driveway before she can get the trunk open, forgoing helping his _favourite sister, she stews,_ in favour of leaning into the driver’s window to gush about how he is already “Their biggest fan!” By the time Julie has wrestled her suitcase to the ground, Reggie has learned Kandie Kane’s real name (“Trevor has such a nice ring to it! You’re going to be a star”) and earned a handful of signed headshots and a Christmas Partie Elf BOGO50 voucher. The last they see of Trevor as they drive away is the flashing reindeer antlers strapped to roof and their tinsel boa waving gently in the breeze.

Reggie turns to her with mock tears in his eyes. “That was some fucking Christmas magic,” he sniffs, and before she can stop laughing, he’s scooped her up into a bear hug and is twirling her in circles on the sidewalk.

“Reg, I’m gonna throw up,” Julie gasps, flailing her arms wildly in an attempt to dislodge herself from his grip. This kind of behaviour is exactly why she tried to convince their parents to sell him to the Cirque Du Soleil people when she was nine. Not only is her brother a fucking lunatic, he’s got the reflexive skills of a chimpanzee. She smacks him a little harder.

“But I missed you so _much_ ,” he wails dramatically. “You were gone for so long—“

“I text you _every day_ — “

“But I never see your face—”

“I FaceTimed you _at the airport this morning,_ you loser!” She smacks him again as he finally lets her down, and then tackles him again in a proper hug. “I missed you too,” she mumbles, face pressed into the shoulder of his signature leather jacket. They don’t speak for a long moment.

_Mom gave him this jacket for his eighteenth birthday. Julie remembers the look on his face while she smoothed the hair out of his eyes and called him a proper rock star. She remembers how he sang Drops of Jupiter for the whole ward that night._

_He slept in it for a year after the funeral._

They pull away eventually, and he ruffles her hair in that casually irritating way only big brothers can. “Oh, yeah. Before we go in, I should probably give you a heads up that Dad and Tía Victoria kind of invited the entire extended family,” he warns sheepishly. Catching her accusatory glare, he holds his hands up in defense. “Hey, don’t look at me. I tried to tell them you wouldn’t want to come home to a Christmas party, but you know how Carlos gets about seeing Sabrina.” Julie groans, burying her face in her hands. Her little brother’s crush on their cousin’s best friend is _not_ a good enough reason to force her into awkward small talk with people she hasn’t seen in nearly three years.

“Reggie, I hate people,” she whines in a perfect impression of her little brother. “Can’t you just hide me in the studio and tell them my flight got delayed or something?”

He snorts. “If bluffing worked, I would’ve been camped out there myself. Dad already knows you’re here, so there’s no escaping. Besides, the boys want to see you!”

She feels like she’s been doused in a bucket of ice water. Her throat is suddenly parched. “Luke and Alex are here?” She spins around to face the street, scanning the row of parked cars until she spots it: Luke’s old tour van, muddy tires and all. She spins back and smacks her brother again.

“Ow!”

“Why wouldn’t you warn me that Luke and Alex were going to be here?” she hisses.

“I just did!” he yelps, dodging out of the way as she reaches for him again.

“ _Okay,_ why wouldn’t you warn me that Luke and Alex were going to be here _before_ I told Dad I was coming home?”

“I thought you knew!” he protests, rubbing his now mildly bruised arm. “Alex came with us to visit you last year, and it’s just _Luke_. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that I haven’t seen Luke in three years and it’s fucking awkward! I haven’t talked to him since he left for that music thing!” her voice is steadily rising in volume and pitch.

“Well, if you never came home to visit after Mom died it’s your problem!” Reggie snaps back.

She’s not sure if he means for it to come out as harshly as it does. Nevertheless, she catches the guilt in his eyes before he turns away, rubbing his temples and looking like he's fighting off a headache. It’s only fair, she reasons, blinking the mist out of her eyes. She stares unseeingly at the sidewalk. She hasn’t been home since she left for Vancouver three years ago, avoiding her family’s invitations to home for Christmas. They fly up every year for the countdown instead, and she spends the time showing them the city and introducing them to her new friends. It’s a system everyone is happy with, or at least that’s what she tells herself. Then again, she knows her brother, knows how much he relies on family now that Mom is gone, and she can’t help but pinch her lips together at the guilt that’s now churning in her stomach. She’s here now though, right? That has to count for something. She can’t exactly make amends for not being there in the past, but she can do what she can to make this year special.

So she surrenders, the only apology that true siblings really know how to give. She takes a deep breath, shaking her head at the half-smile he aims her way and bending to hoist her duffle bag back over her arm. Reggie snags her suitcase in one hand, slinging his other arm over her shoulder, and together they march up the driveway like two soldiers going to war.

**20:00.**

There is not enough spike in this spiked eggnog. It’s the first thing out of her mouth when she sees Alex again, who just laughs and envelopes her in his big bear hug.

“I think your dad thought it would be inappropriate to get everyone hammered at a family function,” he grins, joining her in her refuge by the kitchen counter. She’s decided that it’s the perfect spot for Polite Introverts. It’s both far enough from the action that none of her relatives will try to have the same mind-numbing conversation with her again (“How old are you now?” “Are you in school?” “What are you studying?”) and close enough that her dad can’t give her a disappointed lecture about acting like a “brooding teenager”. Still, as annoyed as she is about being corralled into social interaction on her first night home, she can’t help but smile to herself as she watches the members of her family. Her dad in the living room, lounged on the couch with Tío Edgar and shouting good-naturedly about their kids’ rival soccer teams. Carlos in his red Los Feliz jersey, who’s almost as tall as Reggie and nearly as lanky, sprawled on the pile of beanbag chairs in the corner. The tips of his ears are pink as Cousin Chelsea and Sabrina celebrate victory on Mushroom Gorge. Although, knowing how many hours her brother dedicates to his Nintendo Switch every day, Julie is pretty sure his blush has more to do with the wide smile that splits Sabrina’s face when he lets her win.

“You missed them, huh?” Alex’s sudden voice in her ear nearly makes her slosh the eggnog onto the carpet.

“Yeah,” she smiles ruefully, not taking her eyes off the three teens. “I think about them every day.”

“How come you’re not over there with them?” She stares pointedly at her Tías Victoria and Maria, who are holding what seems to be a full out interrogation over her cousin Greyson’s lack of university aspirations. The poor kid is fourteen, and he’s already been sacrificed to the elders. She turns her head as he tries to catch her attention, eyes screaming for rescue. Sorry, kid. It’s every Molina for themselves.

Alex grins. “Have they asked you where you study yet?”

“Only seven times in the last hour,” she groans.

“And what did you tell them, Miss Scholar of the Family?” he teases, bumping her shoulder. She laughs and leans into him. Come to think of it, the eggnog is making her a little sleepy. Huh. Setting her glass on the counter, she puts on her best Good Girl smile and pitches her voice higher into what Flynn likes to refer to as her “customer service voice”.

“Thanks for asking, Tía! I’m actually studying at UBC in Vancouver at the moment. I’m aiming for a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Psychology. Yes, it’s in Canada. Yes, there’s snow. No, the cold doesn’t bother me too much. No, I’m not dating anyone, I’m focusing on school. Thank you for telling me that my mother never went to college and I should be proud,” she rattles off the gist of her last five encounters until she and Alex dissolve into a fit of giggles behind the counter.

“How’s Willie?” she asks when they’ve caught their breath. “I haven’t seen him since you guys came up last year.”

Alex’s eyes soften visibly at the mention of his boyfriend. “He’s doing really well! He’s been working a lot these days, but since most of the kids are away for the holidays I’ve been able to see him more.”

“That’s awesome,” she tells him, squeezing his hand. Willie teaches Beginner and Intermediate Youth Skateboarding down at the community centre. His go with the flow energy is the perfect balance for Alex’s jittery nerves. “I’m so glad you’re happy.” She remembers all the times Alex used to come over in high school to hide from his parents. His parents were always the uber-religious, impersonal type, forcing their kids to grow up under the mold of a conservative society. The last she ever heard of Mr. and Mrs. Mercer was when Alex got himself emancipated after he came out. He lived with her family for over a year until he moved out on his own. Her stomach twists as she remembers how devastated he was when they left him behind for Arizona, not leaving him so much as a text goodbye – sans new address, of course.

Alex squeezes back. “It’s good to have you home,” he says softly, and then straightens up and flings out his arms. “You’re the guest of honour and you haven’t even said hello to everyone yet,” he announces, grabbing her hand again and proceeding to drag her out the front door. “There’s one more person you have to see.”

Julie’s palms are sweating. She’s been avoiding this moment all night, ducking into the bathroom at convenient times and just generally making sure she doesn’t run into one person in particular. “Alex, really, it’s fine,” she insists, trying to pull him back into the house. “I really don’t need to see him.”

“He’s been looking for you all night. I told him I’d let him know when I found you.”

“I know he has! I’ve just been making sure we are conveniently never in the same space at the same time,” she admits, her sneakers squeaking as she braces them against the concrete. Alex’s sigh is big enough to inflate a helium balloon. He turns to face her. Try as she might, she can’t tug her hand out of his iron grasp, so they stand there pretending she isn’t being held hostage in her own driveway.

The knowing look he gives her makes her feel like she is two years old. “Julie, you can’t avoid Luke forever.”

Her free arm coils around her middle protectively. “Alex, the last time I saw him I humiliated myself in front of the entire student body. It’s too weird.”

“Why does that make it weird?” When she merely stares at him, he prods her gently in the side. “Pretend I’m an idiot. Spell it out for me.”

She lets out a breath. “Look, nobody here is blind. Everyone knows I had a giant crush on him growing up.”

Alex furrows his brow. “So what? So did most of the other girls who went to our school. Well, except for the ones that were into Reggie,” he amends.

“But that’s the thing,” she pushes. “They barely talked to any of them. They were both so invested in music and their guitars that they didn’t notice everybody else either tearing me down for thinking I had a chance with Luke or kissing my ass to get close to Reggie.” There’s a look of guilt in his eyes, then, because she knows he remembers that she came to him for advice when she couldn’t tell Reggie why she was crying in the girls’ locker room.

“You and Reggie are my brothers. There’s nothing weird there; I’d smack you for being stupid even if we hadn’t seen each other in ten years,” she grins as he pokes her playfully. “But I’m not some tweenage fangirl anymore. I don’t know how to act like we’re ‘just friends’. And I’m sure as hell not going to start treating him like he’s always been my brother because that’s weird as shit.” She’s pacing back and forth across the driveway now, furious at her own cowardice. She’s known this guy since she was in diapers, for fuck’s sake. She watched him eat a worm once in third grade because Reggie dared him to. How pathetic is it that she can’t face a worm-eater in her own house?

“Alex, I’m afraid of a worm-eater,” she wails, not providing any further context. He blanches, but the look on his face simply reads, _not going to go there._

“Julie, I promise it is not going to be weird. You’re both adults, you can act like nothing happened and you didn’t keep a picture of his face inside your phone case in middle school.”

_…What?_

“How the fuck do you know about that?” she hisses, but he darts out of her grasp, grinning broadly. She chases him down the driveway, yelling, “I didn’t even _know_ you!”. Alex cackles maniacally, ducking under the garage doors before she can grab the strap of his stupid fanny pack and force him to erase his own brain. She’s going to murder him and then Reggie, the snitch.

It’s not until she registers the sound of a guitar wailing that she remembers who else is in the studio tonight. Luke and Reggie are huddled around the piano, jamming out to a song she recognizes from Sunset Curve’s many Instagram stories.

She will die before she lets Alex find out she’s been stalking Luke’s account to see what he’s up to.

He looks different than she remembers. His shoulders are a little broader, and instead of the usual cropped sides and swept up bangs, he’s grown his hair out a little past his ears. Despite the chillier weather, he’s still rocking his favourite Landed in the USA! shirt with the sleeves cut off and he’s currently attempting a stupid knee slide on her mom’s blue area rug.

He looks, as Flynn would say, _like a fucking snack_.

Alex, sauntering up to the piano, catches her staring and smirks. He points to his phone in his back pocket. She flips him off, and his sickly-sweet smile is nothing less than vindictive when he leans over and mutters in Luke’s ear.

She’s actually going to kill him.

Luke spins around to face her, and despite her trepidation the disarming smile that splits his face is enough to wipe her mind of murder. He passes his guitar to Reggie and bounds across the room, stopping directly in front of her and grinning with childlike delight from ear to ear. He bounces on his heels, and she takes a moment to bask in the familiar habit before breaking out into a tentative smile.

“You know, this is why you wear holes through all your jeans,” she teases, and then he’s sweeping her up into his arms and lifting her off the ground in one fluid motion and she’s laughing, because she can’t believe she ever convinced herself that seeing him again would feel like anything less than coming home. She buries her face in his chest. He smells like eggnog and vanilla and that one cologne she got him for his eighteenth birthday, she notes offhandedly.

“Hey stranger,” he whispers in her ear. She doesn’t need to pull away to hear the smile in his voice.

“Hi,” she hugs him a little tighter. “Heard you guys played the Pit last month.”

“It was sick!” He rests his chin on top of her head, a chuckle rumbling in his throat. “Wasn’t the same without our lucky charm, though.”

“You and Reggie could always just hug each other.”

“You know nobody loves the bromance more than Alex, but sadly it doesn’t always do the trick.” She pulls away to roll her eyes at him and he just laughs, leading her over to the other guys with one arm still slung over her shoulder.

She’s still kind of reeling at the easy way they’ve settled back into their usual dynamic: she’s sandwiched between Luke and Reggie on the couch with Alex perched on the coffee table in front of them, poking fun at each other like she never left. She and Reggie tell Alex about Kandie Kane the Elf (“Are you fucking serious? Why wouldn’t you invite _me?_ ”). The next thing she knows, Alex and Reggie have leapt to their feet in an attempt to imitate the choreography from the video she took, complete with hip wiggles and mimed flourishing of the tinsel boa. Luke grabs his electric, and together the four of them belt out Mariah’s chorus with enough enthusiasm to rival the Macy’s parade.

Reggie was right. This is some fucking Christmas magic.

Eventually, they settle down enough to head inside, drawn by the prospect of snacks and the fact that the driveway is no longer a battleground of family sedans. Ray Molina is standing at the kitchen counter as they enter, still giggling, but Julie's laughter dies in her throat when she catches sight of his face. She elbows Reggie, who snaps his mouth shut to stand at attention.

“Where have you been?”

“We were just in the studio, jamming—” Luke flings his arm over Alex’s shoulder, clamping his hand over the blonde’s mouth and plastering a winning smile across his face. Beside them, the two siblings are locked in an intense staring match.

“You’re older,” Julie mutters. “It’s only right that you die first.”

“You’re Dad’s favourite,” her brother hisses back, giving her a not so gentle shove forward. She shoots him a deadly glare over her shoulder. Why does she always have to be the sacrifice? She smacks his hand away as her reaches to push her again. In front of them, Ray clears his throat impatiently.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she takes a few steps forward, feeling like she’s approaching the bench in a court of law. Either that, or a wild bear in the woods.

“You promised me you were going to make an effort to spend time with family tonight,” he reminds her sternly.

“And I did! I said hi to everyone and even talked about snow with Tía Maria for like ten minutes. She told me I’m probably going to get hypothermia and then have to get rescued by ‘hooligans in polar bear skin’. I don’t think she’s a fan.” The corner of Ray’s mouth is twitching and it looks like he's fighting a smile. The three boys watch with bated breath as Julie crosses the final few feet of distance between them, tucking herself under her father’s arm. “I just wanted to say hi to the boys, and I had a really good time. Thank you for arranging everything, Daddy.” And she closes her argument with her most agreeable smile.

Luke looks like wants to give this girl an Oscar. Ray Molina never could withstand the charm of the women in his family. Reggie can see him cracking, gaze flitting between his two children and his pseudo-sons, all of whom have their best puppy dog eyes on full tilt. He throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Alright, fine.” He points at Alex and Reggie. “You boys better count your lucky stars that your sister is home. Don’t stay up too late.” Dropping a kiss to her forehead, he wanders up the stairs, shaking his head.

They stay perfectly still until he is out of sight.

“Our hero,” Alex gasps, pretending to drop into a dead faint in Julie’s arms.

“Do you know how many times Dad has busted me for doing dumb shit while you were gone? I never would’ve gotten away with your voodoo witch magic,” her brother complains.

“It’s not my fault you have no tact,” Julie snickers back unsympathetically.

“It shouldn’t matter! I’m the cute one in this family!” he all but shrieks. Beside him, Alex mimes stomping his foot, his face twisted in a poor imitation of Reggie’s petulant expression. Luke is laughing so hard he’s nearly doubled over onto the kitchen table, his face glowing cherry red.

Yes, it’s good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene with Ray always makes me laugh because I have a sister that's three years older (which is about the same distance I like to imagine between Julie and the boys) and it's pretty much the same dynamic that we have with our dad.
> 
> What did you think? I'm working on the next part as we speak, so hopefully I can get the whole thing up in time for Christmas.


	2. Don't You Forget About Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're really getting into it now :)

**December 21 st, 2020. 10:00. 4 Days to Christmas.**

She wakes to the chorus of “Party in the USA” blasting from her bedside table. Groggily, she reaches for her phone, knowing it’s probably better to answer the first call than be spammed with messages on every platform.

Lest we forget the Spring Break Foam Party of 2018, when she got so wasted that she passed out early on Jenny Chang’s living room floor and wasn’t conscious till noon. She woke up to no less than six hundred Facebook messages and several threats for a missing persons report because no one had seen her in over twelve hours.

As strange as it may be to start her day in what feels like a time capsule of her teenage self, Julie hasn’t slept this well in years. Still, she is not a morning person.

“…Hello?” Maybe if she sounds extra sleepy Flynn will let her go back to bed.

_"Why didn’t you tell me that the cute Luke you grew up with is Luke fucking Patterson from Sunset Curve?!”_

Scratch that. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.” She’s used to Flynn’s dramatics by now, so she rolls over and snuggles back into her comforter. “Flynn, you’ve _met_ Reggie and Alex. You know they’re in a band. Why wouldn’t Luke be Luke from Sunset Curve?”

There is a series of spluttering from the other end. _"I didn’t know it was Sunset Curve!_ _And your brothers look different in hats.”_ It’s a good thing this girl is a super gifted artist, because she told her parents her backup plan is to be a dental surgeon.

“Flynn, _how?_ Their faces are still the same.”

_"I just never put it together, okay? And then I opened my feed this morning to a polaroid of fetus you under Luke Patterson’s handle with the caption ‘Look who’s finally home’. And I thought, hey, that’s weird, my best friend never told me she was basically the invisible fourth member of the cutest boy band in existence!”_

“Did you fall asleep while scrolling again?” She holds her phone a few inches from her face so she can find the post in question while Flynn babbles on.

It’s a snapshot from 2014, the summer after freshman year. The boys had just graduated from Los Feliz. She’s perched on Alex’s shoulders on Hollywood Boulevard with her arms outstretched and her head flung back. Alex is pretending to play the drums on the heads of Reggie and Luke, who are crouched in front of them with their tongues stuck out. The two of them are throwing up devil horns like the true rock n’ roll dorks that they are.

She remembers this day with vibrant clarity. Sunset Curve had just spent the afternoon playing a live show down at the Santa Monica pier. They had been playing together seriously for about a year by then and had garnered enough attention to be invited to perform at one of the summer festival events. It was an incredible show. She had screamed until her voice was hoarse, singing along to every song and dancing in the front row.

***

“Thank you, Santa Monica! See you later!” Luke calls from the stage. The noise is deafening. Sunset Curve has swept their city by storm. Their unique sound is cemented by a foundation of their pre-established popularity with the student body at Los Feliz, a large portion of whom are now cheering wildly amidst the crowd. Add in Luke’s killer lyrics, Alex’s infectious energy, and Reggie’s clever ear for arrangements, and you have a trio of rising stars that refuse to be ignored.

“Don’t forget, we’re Sunset Curve! Tell your friends!” Reggie’s favourite line is quickly becoming an official slogan for the band. The cheering intensifies.

Slipping from her spot in the front of the crowd, Julie runs along the line of fencing that separates the backstage area from the audience. She grins at the security guard that they met when they first arrived for soundcheck, and he waves her through the gate without so much as a pause. She meets the guys just as they’re bounding down the steps from the raised stage. Alex is panting, his blonde hair in damp disarray. He gives her a high five as he passes and heads straight for the bathrooms, muttering something about an anxious bladder.

“Jules, did you see that?” Luke is absolutely drenched in sweat, tearing away to grab his giant hydro flask from beside his guitar case and then sprinting back. Unlike Alex and Reggie, who has sprawled himself on the ground in front of them and is grinning blankly at the sky, Luke seems electrified. He shifts from one foot to the other, keeping time with a seemingly indiscernible beat. “They loved us! Did you hear how loudly they were cheering when we played Bright? I bet we could change up the harmonies a little more. Hey Reg, how do you feel about dropping down a seventh on the pre chorus instead of the fifth? Or is that too jazzy? That might be too jazzy.” Julie can hardly keep up with his steady stream of chatter. She grabs his arms to stop the incessant bouncing (and tries not to think about how her hands are currently touching his biceps. _Stupid sleeveless shirt_ ), holding him place until he stops acting like he’s trying to run a marathon on a hamster wheel.

“Luke! It sounds great. You guys can workshop it when we get home. I can’t believe you guys just played, like, an actual live show!”

“I know! People actually showed up during the day to watch us perform! We didn’t even have to beg or settle for an opener slot! That’s fucking crazy, dude!”

“I can’t believe that just happened,” Reggie pipes up dazedly from the ground. “We just played for eight thousand people. EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE. I don’t even know the names of eight HUNDRED people. Do you know how many pizzas eight thousand slices of pizza would make? That’s so much pizza!”

“You guys can ask your fans to bring you pizza when you go on your first world tour,” she teases, nudging her brother with the toe of her purple vans.

“Nah, I’d rather have hot dogs.”

Luke makes a retching noise, “Nope. Never again. Dude, last time we got food poisoning so bad I threw up for two days. That is not the way I want to go.” He looks around. “Hey, where’s Alex?”

She shrugs. “Bathroom?” To their left, they can see Alex approaching from the direction of the boardwalk. There’s a giant mustard stain down the front of his purple tee, narrowly missing the strap of his favourite fanny pack. He’s clutching a wad of napkins to his chest and looks like he’s just narrowly missed being run over by a truck.

Julie’s mouth falls open. “What happened to you?”

Reggie gets to his feet. “Dude, you look like you threw up all over yourself.”

“No,” Alex sighs dreamily. “I choked on a hot dog.”

Luke smacks Reggie’s shoulder with wide eyes. “I told you!”

“Alex, _how_ did you choke on a hot dog?” This is going to be like the time Carlos swallowed a Lego and she had to make him explain it to the nurse all over again.

“I went to the bathroom, and then I was hungry, so I went to get a hot dog before the line got crazy. And then he ran me over with his skateboard and I choked on the hot dog so he gave me the Heimlich.”

They stare at him. Luke waves his hand slowly in front of Alex’s face, but his glassy eyes don’t seem to register the intrusion. It would be comical if it wasn’t so concerning.

She glances down at the wad of napkins still cradled to his chest and pries them gently away from his sticky fingers. Luke and Reggie peer over either of her shoulders as she smooths them out, revealing three words hastily scrawled in blue sharpie:

_Willie! Call me! :)_

Below that is a phone number.

_Holy shit._

“Alex!” her brother whoops, picking him up and spinning him around. Alex is laughing loudly by the time Reggie has set him down. “Dude! You got game!”

“Was he cute?” “Do you like him?” “Are you gonna call?” “Of course he’s going to call, did you see his face?” Luke and Julie pepper him with questions until he runs away to pack his drum kit.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!” Reggie calls loudly, chasing after him. Alex mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key, then turns away to pack his equipment for their departure.

“We should go take a picture on the Walk of Fame later,” says a voice in Julie’s ear.

“Why? You aiming for a star?” she jokes back.

Luke grins confidently. “Oh, we’ll be up there one day. But we should take a picture for ten years from now. To commemorate The Day It All Began.”

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You’re such a sap.” He pokes her in the side until she shies away, squealing. “I hope you know this is a horrible way to ask me to be your photographer.”

“Why would you be the photographer?” he laughs. “We’ll just give your camera to a tourist or something. You’ll be in the picture.”

She shifts uncomfortably. “I’m not really a part of the band, though,” she protests. And then, jokingly, “I’m like your roadie. Or a crazed fangirl who doesn’t have a choice because one of you is my brother.”

He stares at her. “What are you talking about? You’re like our secret weapon.”

“I’m really more like a clumsy cheerleader,” she disagrees.

Luke shakes his head incredulously, like he’s just stumbled across the world’s most unsolvable equation. “You’re the heart, Jules. There’s no one more enthusiastic about the band than you are.” At her bashful look, he squeezes her shoulders, leaning down to make sure she’s looking right at him. “You come to every show. You’re at every practice. You make notes for us about dynamics and help Reggie adjust arrangements – hell, you even help me write lyrics sometimes. You deserve credit for our success just as much as we do.”

Her face is on fire. She wants to shrink back into her habit of scuffing her sneakers against the ground, but he’s holding her gaze with such an intensity that she’s breathless. He taps the underside of her chin with his index finger. “Chin up, okay?”

“…Okay.”

It’s late evening when they drop her off at home. Her brother might’ve promised Mom that they would bring her back in time for curfew, but the night is still young for the older boys. Reggie and Alex are upstairs, grabbing a change of clothes before they head out to a party a few blocks over. Not that Julie minds, since she and Mom have a movie night planned. They’ve recently acquired the extended edition DVDs of the first two High School Musical films and there’s a plate of cookies on the kitchen table with her name on it.

As excited as she is to absorb herself into the musical drama of East High, Julie waits by the door, keeping Luke company until Reggie and Alex come down. She doesn’t like the sad look that crosses his face sometimes, when they leave him alone and he doesn’t think anyone is watching.

“Hey Luke?”

“Yeah, Jules?”

“Is your picture developed yet?” From his wallet, he produces the thin slip of film, shaking it around under the lamplight.

“Is that supposed to help?” She pulls out a nearly identical polaroid from her pocket and they wave them around for a while.

“I have no clue, but it looks pretty cool.” His cheeky grin doesn’t waver when she smacks him in the stomach.

She huffs, peering down at the photo to examine their tiny faces. “I feel kind of bad that Reggie and Alex didn’t get a picture.”

“Nah.” She peeks up at him. His eyes are soft as he watches her. “They’d just lose theirs. You can share with Alex and I’ll share with Reg and then we’ll all have one.”

“Okay.” And then, “Hey Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“If you really want to make it cool, you should stagger the backing vocals on the last chorus and do a riff or something over it.”

She can’t quite decipher the look on his face, but she basks in his smile anyway.

***

 _“…And then I was like, no Dad, I don’t think you should buy your new girlfriend a perfume that’s literally named Cannibal, I don’t care if it’s expensive…”_ Flynn is still talking when she comes back to earth. Somehow, the call has been shifted to speaker phone and Julie is upright in bed, her purple phone case discarded somewhere to the right. Peeled from the back of her now bare phone is an old polaroid, worn and greying around the edges from all the times she’s fallen asleep holding it.

She didn’t know Luke still had his.

_“I think it’s probably because she’s allergic to shellfish or something. Otherwise there is no excuse for any human being to be that rude. Like, how can—”_

“Hey Flynn?” she interrupts.

_“Hey Julie?”_

She giggles. “I love you, but I have to go.”

 _“Ughhh. I hate him. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Love you too.”_ Flynn cuts the line, and Julie is left alone, listening to the faint sound of a guitar singing from somewhere outside her window.

Another memory strikes her, then, and she leans over the side of her mattress in a nosedive, arms outstretched as she searches blindly beneath her bed. Catching the ends of something soft, she tugs out her prize and settles back more comfortably against her headboard. In her lap is a shoebox, covered in purple acrylic paint with the words “JULIE AND CARRIE’S FRIENDSHIP BOX! STAY OUT! THAT MEANS YOU, CARLOS” written along the side in gold glitter glue. It’s wrapped in her favourite scarf from seventh grade.

Opening the box is like being sent back to middle school in a time machine. The inside of the lid is a collage of photos: _Carrie, with a pink Barbie microphone in hand. Their crossed wrists stacked with multicoloured friendship bracelets. Julie, playing the keyboard on Carrie’s bed. A selfie of the two of them together, eyes crossed and tongues stuck out._

She digs through the box, pilfering through the extensive collection of Silly Bandz and puffy stickers until she finds what she’s looking for: a sheet of lined paper, obviously torn from a notebook in a moment of excitement. Across the top reads, “Friendship Contract: Julie Molina and Carrie Wilson, 2011.” Her mouth twists into a wry smile.

_We, Julie Molina and Carrie Wilson, promise that we will stand by the rules of this contract until the end of time._

  1. _We will always stay best friends!_
  2. _We will always wear our friendship bracelets. (That means every day!)_
  3. _We will never like the same person_
  4. _We will always be there for each other_
  5. _We will be Prom Queens in high school and be famous together!_
  6. _We will never end up enemies_



At the bottom of the page are their seventh-grade signatures, their first names scrawled out in loopy cursive with multicoloured gel pens.

Julie tucks the contract in beside the stack of rainbow friendship bracelets and slides the box back under her bed where it belongs. The house is deathly quiet.

She doesn’t get out of bed for a long time.

**14:00.**

“Reggie, you’re going to break it.”

“It’s fine, Julie.”

“No, it’s not! You’re holding it at the top and it’s going to break!”

“I am literally holding it by the stem. Maybe if you got out of my way, I could put it down sooner and you wouldn’t have to freak out.”

“I wouldn’t be freaking out if you didn’t break everything you touch!”

Ah, yes. The time-honoured tradition of arguing with your siblings during the holidays while trying to figure out how to set up an artificial Christmas tree. The two of them have been left in charge of preparing the tree for decoration while Luke and Alex dig through the loft in the garage for the ornaments. Julie _had_ set up a colour-coded labelling system in the loft a few years ago, when she discovered that she is apparently the _only_ person in a house full of _cavemen_ that understands organization. According to Alex, who – bless his heart – really did try to keep it together while she was gone, the rest of the family is very good at taking items _out_ of their neatly sorted homes but not very good at putting them back _in_. Thus, the Christmas tree was found stuffed in a box marked “INFLATABLE DRACULA” in orange sharpie.

Reggie finally manages to lock the top third of the tree into its PVC stem. He steps back and claps his hands, brushing a few stray pine needles from the sleeves of his favourite flannel. “See! We did it! No muss, no fuss.” He collapses next to her on the couch, admiring his handiwork.

Julie makes a mental note to vacuum the floor before her dad gets home from work. “Hey, are you sure Carlos is cool with us decorating without him? We could always wait until he comes home from soccer practice.”

Reggie’s face twists into a pained expression. “Uh, no. It’s cool. Carlos doesn’t really do the whole… ‘Christmas’ thing anymore.”

Her brow creases. When they were younger, Carlos would wake her up at dawn on Christmas morning. The two of them would stifle their giggles, creeping down the stairs to count the presents under the tree. She would sneak a sugar cookie from the shelf in the kitchen that Carlos was too small to reach and they would split it on the stairs before sneaking back to their beds. It was one of her favourite holiday traditions. “Since when?”

“Since – well, since mom passed away and you left and then you never came home.” Unlike yesterday, there’s not a drop of malice in his voice. He simply puts it out into the open, a cold, sad fact, and it hangs in the air like a warm breath on a bitter day.

Her throat feels tight. She can’t speak.

“Have you talked to him?” Her brother's voice is uncharacteristically gentle. She can only shake her head. “Hey,” he squeezes her knee. She slumps against him, leaning her head onto his shoulder. “Don’t feel too bad. We’ve all had a hard time getting through to him lately. Especially Dad. Carlos goes out and doesn’t come home for hours and when he does, Dad doesn’t handle it well. They’ve been fighting a lot lately.”

This does nothing to make her feel better. “He’s my little brother,” she says softly. “I should’ve been there for him.”

“You’re my little sister,” Reggie shrugs back, dislodging her head momentarily. “I should’ve been there for both of you.”

 _“We found it!”_ Luke’s loud cheer breaks through the quiet before she can answer. He and Alex parade in, each bearing a set of plastic tubs spilling over with tinsel and wisps of artificial snow. None of them are labeled in red or green. “They were behind all the suitcases, for some reason.”

“Which is weird, since we haven’t taken a trip in like five years,” Alex adds, scratching his head. “Oh, and we couldn’t find the star and we got tired of looking, so… sorry?” He shrugs sheepishly.

“We can always find it later,” Julie tells him, getting up to move the Dracula box out of the way. She joins the others in a heap on the carpet, sorting through the ornaments and untangling the ghastly mess that is the silver tinsel.

Thank god her parents had the foresight to buy a pre-lit tree.

“I love this one!” Reggie pulls out a baked cinnamon ornament, dangling from a loop of green ribbon and roughly molded into the shape of a teddy bear. On the back reads, “Reggie, 2002” in black marker. “I loved Mrs. McKinley’s class,” he smiles ruefully.

Julie snickers. “Mom said you tried to eat the dough.”

“It smelled good!” Reggie protests.

“Jeez, Alex, I almost forgot about the bowl cut.” Luke hands him a flat wooden ornament in the shape of a bell. In it is a picture of a younger Alex, his face a little rounder and his jaw less defined. The back reads, “We got a new brother! 2013” in her Mom’s neat handwriting. Alex fiddles with it in his hands quietly, smiling to himself, and then gets up to hang it on the tree.

The rest of the afternoon continues in a similar pattern. They take turns pulling ornaments out of the boxes and reminiscing on the memories associated with each one. Every single piece is labelled with a name and a year in the same familiar scrawl. Luke finds a tiny snow globe (“For my favourite godson!”) Julie finds a stuffed doll wearing a dress sewn from the scraps of her favourite childhood skirt. Reggie finds a miniature wreath fashioned from painted popsicle sticks and popcorn. For the first time, Julie finds herself talking about her mom (“She told me I was so upset when I found out elves weren’t real because I loved their pointy ears. I didn’t even care about Santa.”) without a lump in her throat. Reliving her childhood memories without the overwhelming urge to cry or the pressure to accept awkward condolences is strangely cathartic. It’s nice, knowing that everyone in this room misses her just as much as she does, and for the first time, she’s able to grieve with her family, remembering her mom the way she would’ve wanted her to.

**22:00.**

It’s after dinner by the time Carlos finally comes home. Alex is spending the night at Willie’s, so she’s sprawled out on the carpet in Luke and Reggie’s shared bedroom. They’re working on an arrangement for their next gig when she hears the door slam. Her dad’s shouting booms up the stairs.

“Here we go.” Luke grimaces. He and Reggie are on their feet and down the stairs before she even realizes what’s happening. She follows them out of the room, feet stilling at the top of the stairs as she watches the scene unfold beneath her.

 _"Getting arrested Carlos, are you crazy?”_ Ray’s face is beet red. He’s gripping his phone so tightly that, for a moment, Julie is worried he might accidently crush it in his hand.

“It’s not a big deal, okay? The cops were up our asses because they were being dicks, that’s all.” Carlos’s tone is bored and unfeeling. Reggie’s eyebrows shoot up. Julie holds her breath.

“ _Not a big deal?_ Carlos, you were caught _breaking and entering!_ You’re lucky they let you off with a warning! You’re lucky I didn’t leave your ass there when they called me!”

Luke looks like he’s preparing to break up a fist fight.

“If I had known you were going to be this annoying when you picked me up, I would’ve just let them keep me.” Carlos’s quiet voice rings out like a gunshot.

Ray looks like he’s been slapped. His tone is dangerous. “You’re grounded. You will stay in your room until I tell you otherwise, and if I catch you leaving this house, the next time you get arrested I _will_ leave you there.”

“Go ahead.” Julie almost doesn’t recognize her little brother, not with that expression on his face. He grabs his backpack off the counter, pulls his phone from his front pocket, and strolls casually out the front door.

“Get your ass back inside! Do you hear me, Carlos?” her dad roars, but the only answer he gets is the sound of the door slamming.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Luke rushes forward to grab Ray’s arm before his legs give out. He helps him into a chair. Julie stands frozen in place, gripping the bannister with numb fingers. Her blood is pounding in her ears. Who was that? When did her little Carlos become someone that could speak to his father like that?

When did her dad get so old?

Reggie sighed. “That went well, as usual.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we go! Easter eggs, Willex, and a whole lot of conflict. There weren't too many Jukebox moments in this chapter, but I promise it will come soon. It's really important to me to build characters that have depth and are actually relatable, so that's what I'm aiming for lol.
> 
> What did you think? Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed it! They honestly make me so happy and are the propelling force behind quick updates for most writers!
> 
> PS. As a singer and violin player, I firmly believe that 7ths and 9ths always make cool slightly crunchy jazz chords and anybody who disagrees can fight me lmao


	3. A Lesson in Breaking Your Own Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a holiday-time fic but it didn't work out that way, so please enjoy some Christmas content well into the New Year lmao.
> 
> This chapter was extremely difficult to write. It's always so hard to put characters so near and dear to my heart through so much emotional turmoil, but as they say: All good characters have tragic backstories.
> 
> This chap is a little shorter than usual, but I hope you enjoy it anyways! The song mentioned is Taylor Swift's New Years Day :)

**Still December 21 st. 23:00.**

“You know, as the man of the house, I’m supposed to be keeping an eye out for burglars.” Julie whirls around to see Luke seated on the carpeted floor of the loft behind her, his legs dangling casually off the landing. He winks.

She raises her eyebrows in her most unimpressed expression. “Are you the man of the house now?”

The side of his mouth quirks up. “I’m only on duty when everyone else is asleep.”

She hums back noncommittally. “How’s your shift going?”

“Like I said, I’m keeping an eye out for burglars. I seem to be making exceptions for pretty girls, though.”

Fighting off the blush that threatens to rise in her cheeks, she rolls her eyes at him and turns back to the task at hand: digging through the wasteland of cardboard and plastic that used to be her storage system. So far, she’s found a broken tambourine, Reggie’s old skateboard, and a garden gnome (in a box that is now completely entombed in duct tape) that is, without a shred of a doubt, cursed. She doesn’t know where they got it or why they have it, but she’s not going to put it out on the lawn and set it free like some unsuspecting main character in a horror movie.

There’s a rustle of movement behind her, and then Luke’s warm body appears at her side. She keeps her gaze focused on Carlos’s old super soaker as he makes himself comfortable, arranging his limbs to mimic her cross-legged position. He grabs the next item from the pile, a tangle of cords and metal rings that looks suspiciously like Alex’s volleyball net.

She pretends not to notice how closely he’s sitting, or how easy it would be to shift her weight to the right and press her thigh against his, all long lines and steady anchor. _This isn’t the right time._ She’s only home for another week or so before she gets on a flight back to Vancouver, and then he’ll be busy with the band, totally invested in his music. Always trying to make something more of himself.

“Keep or throw away?”

“Keep, I think. Alex probably wants it.” He tosses it into one of the growing piles behind them. They don’t speak for a while, silently sorting through the mountain of (mostly broken) family memorabilia. It’s a quiet night, warmer than usual for this time of year and late enough that the constant bustle of the city outside has died down to a low hum.

“Hey Luke?”

“Yeah, Jules?” It’s a familiar exchange. She can hear the chuckle in his voice, but she’s not really in a teasing mood tonight.

“What are you doing out here?”

He doesn’t seem to hear her. She sneaks a glance at him and is startled to see that he’s wearing a sad smile, gazing up at the sky through the dormer window.

“Luke?”

“Sorry. Just thinking. You’re looking for the star, right?” She nods mutely. He reaches for the stack of suitcases that rise above her, murmuring, “Watch your head,” and settles one on the floor in front of them. It’s army green and covered in a myriad of band stickers: the same suitcase Luke brought with him when he first moved into their house.

_He looked so frail, standing next to that suitcase. It scared her. He was normally so energetic and eager to prove himself. That day in the front hall, with his eyes rimmed red, he looked like a stranger._

_“Oh, honey.” Mom came rushing down the stairs, her tiny frame reaching to fold him into her arms, cradling him in that comforting way only moms can, but Luke didn’t cry. He just stood there, staring straight ahead like he couldn’t see them._

When Luke lifts the cover, the first thing Julie sees is the star, its mirrored edges flashing at her in the dim lamplight. Tucked around it are a handful of Luke’s old tee shirts, faded and worn. Her hands shake as she lifts it from its makeshift packaging, turning the glass frame over in her hands and bracing herself to asses the damage.

Not a single one of its ten tips have been chipped. Her eyes flick quickly to Luke, who’s watching her with careful eyes. At her questioning look, he clears his throat. “I know – I know that stuff gets broken up here a lot. And I know how important that star is you, so when I came home for Christmas after you moved to Vancouver I just… hid it. So you wouldn’t have to come home to a broken star.”

She doesn’t know what to say.

He gives his hand to her easily. She squeezes his fingers, pulling him in for a tight hug. His arms slip around her waist, cheek pressed to her temple. Her nose slips along the line of his jaw and she feels the sigh leave his chest like a soldier finally coming home. “Thank you.” Her small voice seems to echo around them.

“You’re welcome, Jules.” They hold each other in comfortable silence for a moment.

“Hey Luke?”

He hums.

“You didn’t know I was up here, did you?”

He doesn’t answer.

“What were you looking for?”

He doesn’t say anything, just nudges her back gently until she pulls away, searching his face for any sign of that looming sadness. She finds it in the subtle hunch of his posture, the slight furrow of his brow, in the tightness at the corners of his mouth. They’re small tells, ones that would be easy to pass off as concentration or excitement. They aren’t anything that would usually be cause for concern for the average person. But he’s Luke and she’s Julie and they’ve known each other all her life.

Her right hand moves of its own volition. Before she can stop herself, her fingers have slipped around the curve of his cheek. The base of her palm meets the edge of his mouth, right at the seam where his lopsided smile tugs upwards. His sharp inhale flutters against her wrist and she can only hold her breath, praying that he can’t feel the racing of her pulse against his skin.

“Jules,” he breathes. There’s a silent warning in his eyes, his nose just a hairsbreadth away from her cheek.

“You can tell me,” she whispers, her other hand finding solace over his thudding heart. His grips her waist and it’s never lost on her how he touches her like she’s bound to break. The exhale shudders in his chest. His breaks away from her gaze, hazel eyes flickering downwards to her lips.

“Luke,” this time the warning is hers. She tilts away from his mouth, leaning to press her forehead against his. Her thumb strokes his cheek. “You can tell me,” she murmurs again.

His lips shape the words so quietly she doesn’t feel the breath. But she feels the tremble in his shoulders, the clenching of his jaw, and she knows. She always does, when he dwells too long on the only thing that still haunts him in the daylight.

***

He’s playing again.

It’s been two months since Luke came to live with them. In that time, he’s barely spoken a word. Her electric Luke, always bursting with life, is now as hushed as a funeral march. It’s only fitting, she knows. But she _misses_ him, misses his laughter and his overwhelming energy and the way he sings like there’s nowhere on earth he’d rather be but with her.

It’s been fifty-nine days since Luke’s whole world imploded and, in that time, he’s spent nearly every minute alone. It’s not that she’s been spying on him. It doesn’t really count as spying if she sleeps in the room next to his (although she knows he doesn’t really sleep anymore either). If he’s not camped out on Reggie’s top bunk, he’s in the loft in the studio. Mom gave him permission to hide out in their special writing place. She told Julie to “give him the space” because it’s “part of the healing process”. Not that she minds. At this point she’ll do anything to make sure he’ll be okay again.

The band hasn’t rehearsed all this time either because Reggie and Alex are also adamant about “giving him space”. Julie doesn’t really understand why anyone would want to be alone at a time like this, but she’s lucky, she knows. Her mom is the world’s best confidante.

The lack of company must’ve worked, though, because Julie, who’s passing by the studio on her way home from school, hears the gentle picking of an acoustic guitar. She nearly bursts into the garage in her excitement, but remembering her mom’s orders, thinks better of it and pokes her head cautiously through the gap in the barn doors.

_"He said, she said… conversations in my head –”_ Luke is muttering to himself, scribbling in the worn notebook Mom gave him for his birthday last year. He hums a few more bars, strumming through the chords on his guitar before returning to the lyrics, biting his lip in concentration. Julie gets so swept up in watching him that she forgets she’s supposed to be hiding and hums out a few harmonies.

The guitar clatters against the floor, and Luke’s stricken face appears over the railing. She stumbles backwards, gripping the door to keep from falling over.

“What are you doing here?” His voice is raspy from weeks of disuse.

“I was just—” she pauses, because how does one explain to someone that she needs their music like it’s oxygen, or gravity, without using any of the hundreds of metaphors stuffed into her dream box that make her sound like a lovesick stalker?

She settles on a partial truth. “I just heard you playing,” she confesses. “I missed your voice.” Luke’s expression doesn’t change. His eyes are open, but it feels like he’s looking straight through her, yearning for some invisible dream on the other side.

She takes a cautious step forward, measuring his expression carefully. When he doesn’t react, she makes her slow ascent up the ladder to join him. By the time she reaches his side, he is staring listlessly at the wall in front of him, still seemingly in a trance. It makes her heart ache.

“Luke,” his eyes flicker briefly in recognition, “You can talk to me.” It’s something she’s heard at least a hundred times before, Reggie and Alex’s desperate pleas floating their muffled way through the wall to her headboard at night.

“I know,” is the standard answer. “Thanks,” he tacks on after a brief pause, but his voice is hollow, with no gratitude left in him to give.

She doesn’t know what to do. She’s not her mom, bursting with decades of wisdom and experience, graced with the extraterrestrial talent of Saying the Right Thing at the Right Time. She’s just Julie, who writes when she’s sad and sings when she cries and who turns to other people to hold her up when things fall apart. And there’s only one other person who can make her feel like Something Worth Watching when she feels like nothing at all, and that’s Luke himself.

Struck with a moment of inspiration, she picks up his guitar and takes a seat directly in front of him, right where he’ll have no choice but to look right at her.

It’s been a few months since the last time he gave her a lesson. Her transitions between chords are still a little stilted and her strumming isn’t the most confident, but she manages. Her hushed voice washes over them like a warm breath.

_There’s glitter on the floor after the party_

_Girls carrying their shoes home in the lobby_

_Candle wax and polaroids on the hardwood floor_

_You and me from the night before_

He’s fully alert now, she can tell. He’s watching her hands move against the neck of his guitar, his fingers twitching automatically in time with the strumming pattern as she plays.

_Don’t read the last page_

_But I stay, when you’re lost and I’m scared and you’re turning away_

_I want your midnights_

_But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day_

She nudges his outstretched legs with her knee. It jostles the guitar a little and she has a small moment of panic as she continues to strum, but she catches up with the rhythm quickly enough.

She doesn’t miss the small smile that ghosts his lips.

_You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi_

_I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road_

_I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe_

_Or if you strike out and you’re crawlin’ home_

His eyes meet hers as she hits the bridge, pouring every ounce of worry and heartache she’s agonized over these past two months into the words as she sings.

_Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you_

_Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you_

_Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you_

_And I will hold on to you_

His hand is on her knee, which is actually extremely distracting, but she’s too focused on calling him back to her to allow it to affect her singing.

_Don’t read the last page_

_But I stay when it’s hard or it’s wrong or we’re making mistakes_

_I want your midnights_

_But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day._

She lets the last note ring out, searching his face intently for any sign of change. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just slips his hand under the guitar in her lap and sets it on the ground beside them.

“The last thing I ever said to them was ‘I hate you,’” he whispers, and then the dam breaks and she is sitting back against the wall with him curled up between her knees, his face buried in her shoulder and soaking through the cotton of her sweater.

“They know you didn’t mean it,” is all she can tell him, holding onto him with all her might as he falls apart in her arms. “I’m sure they’re up there somewhere, knowing how much you loved them.” His whole body shakes with sobs.

“My mom told me I—I was wasting my time with music. And my dad said I was never going to have a proper career. And I told them I hated them,” he chokes out. “I walked out on them and I went to band practice and when I came home, they were gone.” Julie’s brow creases.

“Luke, listen to me,” she urges sharply. “You are not the reason they were in a car accident; do you hear me? There is no possibility that it could ever be your fault.” He only cries harder.

Is this what’s he’s been dealing with all this time? Her chest feels tight, her stomach rolling with guilt. None of them had any idea of how much he was hurting. They had let him suffer on his own, thinking that he would come to them when he was ready.

She holds him until the afternoon light melts away to dusk, until the tears that thunder in his chest have quieted to sniffles and sighs. She smooths a hand through his hair and scratches gently at his scalp, repeating the soothing motions until his cheek is pillowed serenely against the junction of her neck and shoulder.

“What were you working on earlier?” she runs her hand down his back.

He shifts to nudge his nose closer to her ear. “I’ve been trying to write this song for my mom. An apology, I guess. Just a bunch of things I never got to tell her.”

“She’d love it,” she tells him, her voice ringing with quiet certainty. The golden light streaming through the dormer window is soft on his face, highlighting the red tones in his eyelashes and the curve of his nose. He looks almost ethereal.

***

Buried next to the star under layers of old band shirts is a familiar silver gift box. It’s about the size of her outstretched hand on all sides and tied carefully shut with a length of blue ribbon. Julie can feel Luke’s breath on the side of her cheek as she undoes the bow, pulling off the lid to reveal the shimmering ornament.

It’s a glass sphere about the size of a baseball, secured delicately into a polished metal cap engraved with a snowflake pattern. The handful of iridescent tinsel within glints mischievously at her as she lifts the ornament from its bed of silver tissue. Resting upright atop the tinsel is a scroll, a musical score rolled carefully outwards to display the title printed across the top: “Unsaid Emily”.

“I can’t believe you still have this.” She turns the ornament this way and that, relishing in its soft sparkle.

“Of course I do,” his response is so matter of fact it makes her heart race. “Do you remember what you said when you gave it to me?”

She can’t help the nostalgic smile that lifts her lips. She leans comfortably into his chest, his arms encircling her waist from behind. “I told you about my mom’s star, and how her grandmother gave it to her before she passed. We all had family heirlooms, so it was only fitting that you did too.”

He presses his mouth against her temple in a not-quite kiss. “Hey Jules?”

“Yeah, Luke?”

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

There’s a pause. She stares down at the scroll in her hands. “I just don’t know,” she whispers.

“Don’t know what?” He coaxes, voice gentle.

“I don’t know who I am without her,” she confesses, and her voice cracks before she can tell him how much it would hurt if she did know, because then she wouldn’t need her mother anymore and the last piece of her heart holding on to her ghost will have broken away. “I can’t do this, Luke. I can’t hold the family together the way she did. I need her,” She doesn’t know who she is pleading with, Luke or her mother, but there are tears streaming down her face and she can’t stop the words that are bubbling out of her mouth from where they’ve been pushed down since the day she left the country. “She died and I ran away, even though I knew they needed me. And now Carlos has gone off to who knows where and Dad looks like he’s three fights away from a heart attack and Reggie’s trying to take all the responsibility and _we need her_.”

“Julie, listen to me,” Luke’s voice is stern in her ear. “It is _not_ your responsibility to hold this family together. We all lost her. We dealt with it in different ways. You needed space, your dad got overprotective and Carlos, well, he just needs someone to listen to him. But that isn’t your fault, and it’s not your job to fix it. We all have a responsibility to keep the family together now.”

“Did you know I almost gave up music?” He stills at her words. “I didn’t sing a note for almost a year because it made me think of her and I thought she’d be disappointed in me. Coming home and arranging with you guys has been the most I’ve sung in like three years.”

She can hear him swallow, mulling over his words before he speaks again. “You know that I understand more than anyone how easy it is to give up music after you lose someone. I know how it feels to lose your mom, when you feel like a part of you dies with them. But I also know that music is what brings you back to life. It’s how you can honour your mom’s memory, by doing what makes you feel alive again.” He pulls back and nudges her to face him. His eyes are urgent and pleading. “You can’t give up what makes you happy,” he says so earnestly she doesn’t have the heart to argue.

“Okay,” she whispers. She can’t bring herself to tear away from his gaze, so they just sit there, staring at each other in the moonlight.

“I’m really glad you’re home,” he tells her softly. He raises her hand to his mouth, his lips a whisper on her skin. For a moment, she lets her eyelids flutter shut, swept into a far-off daydream where _whatever this is_ has any possible chance of working out the way they’ve always wished it would. When she opens her eyes to see his face, for a split second, she almost believes it.

But that’s not real life, and they both know it. So he drops her hand. She trades his ornament for her great-grandmother’s star and slips silently down the ladder towards the house with nothing more than a hushed “Goodnight.” She doesn’t look back, because she knows if she does she won’t walk away again, and neither of them deserve to have their hearts shattered when whatever this holiday magic is finally releases its spell.

This is all they are. He’s Luke and she’s Julie, and they trade secrets in the dark where no ghosts can steal them away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? Leave a comment if you'd like, they always make me so happy!
> 
> Next up is going to be Julie and Carlos time so stay tuned!


	4. What Is Lost Can Be Found; Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is much shorter than the others as it has been split into two parts. Sorry, friends. I've been struggling a lot with managing my anxiety this week (ayyy, January, am I right?) and it's making it difficult to concentrate.
> 
> I managed to finish this scene, at least, so hopefully this will tide you guys over until I can get the rest of the chapter up. Thank you for being patient with me <3
> 
> If this chapter isn't enough for you this week, I also posted a Juke New Year's Eve!AU oneshot a few days ago, so go check that out :)

**December 22 nd, 2020. 0:00. 3 Days to Christmas.**

She makes it back to her room just in time to catch Carlos climbing in through her window, one foot still braced in the crook of the oak tree outside. He freezes as she comes through the door, each equally startled to see the other. They're quite a strange sight: him in his grey sweatpants and maroon Bobcats hoodie, his ratty backpack slung over his shoulder; her in her blue sleep shorts and thin sweater, eyes rimmed red and clutching a glass star to her chest. When she doesn’t make a move to speak, Carlos pulls himself the rest of the way through her window to rest his weight firmly on her bedroom floor. The look on his face is equal parts cautious and defiant, but he, too, says nothing. It reminds her of a moment years ago, when she caught him filling Alex’s second-favourite snapback with shaving cream and glitter because their pseudo-brother had eaten all of the chocolate-chip cookies.

She sighs and crosses the room to her bed, setting the star down on the nightstand. She makes herself comfortable on the mattress, sitting upright against the headboard. “Come here,” she holds out her arms to her brother, who is still standing perfectly still by the window, hardly daring to breathe. “But no shoes on the bed.” The hard look on his face softens imperceptibly at her warm tone. He kicks off his sneakers and backpack and climbs clumsily onto the bed next to her, slumping down until he is low enough to lean into her embrace. She can feel his entire body relax the moment she closes her arms around him, as if he hasn’t been held like this in a long, long time.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I told Mom and Dad I hated them?”

Of all the things she could’ve said, she knows this is last thing her brother expected. “You did?” She can see his face twisting in bewilderment.

She grins dryly. “I was twelve and I wanted to go to Carrie’s summer home in the Seychelles for two weeks. They told me I was too young to be leaving the country without their supervision and I just… lost it. Got into a huge fight with Mom and ended up telling both of them that I never wanted to see them again.”

“Seriously?” Carlos looks thoroughly perplexed. “But you always got along so well with Mom and Dad. I don’t think I ever saw you fight with them.”

Julie hums, absentmindedly carding her fingers through his dark hair. “Well, you were still little by the time I grew out of it. We still had disagreements every now and then, but after I experienced life a little more I started understanding where they were coming from.”

“You mean somehow understanding why Dad is always such an overbearing, breathing-down-your-neck-at-all-times control freak?”

“Car,” she warns. “The hostility isn’t helping your case.”

“But it’s not fair! All he ever does is get on my ass about _everything_. What my clubs are doing, who my friends are hanging out with, what I’m _eating_ — did Reggie tell you he searched my backpack once and dumped out my water bottle because he thought I was mixing my blue Gatorade with alcohol?”

She’s stunned. “No, he didn’t.”

“I was just sugar high because Grant and I bet with pixie sticks on who could score more times in a minute with the other as goalie!” She has to shush him to keep his voice from waking the rest of the house.

“I don’t have to listen to him if he’s not going to trust me.” Carlos folds his lanky arms defiantly. “Reggie dropped out of college to get famous. You ran away from home,” she winces inwardly, “I didn’t do anything.”

“You got arrested earlier today,” she reminds him gently.

“We literally climbed the fence into the school field so we could play soccer,” he grumbles irritably. “I don’t understand how it’s breaking and entering if they force us to be there for the whole school year.”

“Look, Car,” Julie lets out a long breath, mulling over her thoughts for a moment. She chooses her words carefully, “I know that none of this has been easy for you. I know you miss Mom, and I get it. I miss her every day,” she takes pride in the fact that her voice hardly shakes this time around. “As sad as it is, there’s nothing any of us can do to take back how much we’ve hurt each other. And no matter how _awful_ Reggie and I feel for being so caught up in our own lives that we weren’t there for you,” her brother’s bitter expression melts marginally at her admission, “You have to understand that moving was something I _needed_ to do. Going to Vancouver meant I could focus on something that wasn’t Mom for a while. Reggie felt it too. That’s why he and the boys are so obsessed with making the band work. It’s so we can prove to ourselves that we can be successful without her, that what she taught us growing up was enough to carry us through our lives.” She reaches over to her nightstand for the star, drawing it into her lap and fingering its angular edges before continuing softly, “Out of all of us, I think Dad took it the hardest. He lost the love of his life, and then he still had to go to work every day and take care of us while pretending everything was fine. He never got to escape from reality the way we did.” She swallows the lump of guilt in her throat. “In a way, I understand his need to be overprotective. Reg and I were basically adults, so we could take care of ourselves. He didn’t know how to parent you without her.” She holds the star up to the lamplight, tilting it this way and that to watch the iridescent prisms change patterns on the far wall. “Grief makes people do crazy things.”

Carlos is quiet for a moment, staring intently at one of the roses printed on the comforter by her knee and fiddling with a crease in the fabric. He doesn’t speak until she returns the star to its place on her nightstand. “I’m really mad at him.”

She gives him a sad smile. “I know.”

“I’m mad at you, too.”

“I know, Car.”

“I messed up really bad, Julie.” He lifts his eyes to meet hers, and the emotional turmoil she had been experiencing in the loft just a short while ago is nothing, nothing compared to how badly her heart breaks to see fat tears dripping silently down her little brother’s face. He doesn’t sob or tremble, just stares straight ahead with his eyes wide open and his lips pressed stubbornly shut. He’s always been a brave one, her Car. Braver than her or Reggie or their dad. He gets that from Mom, a voice whispers in the back of her mind (and isn’t tragic, that this is both the proudest and most resentful realization she’s ever had about her brother?).

“Hey,” she whispers, tightening her arms around him and kissing the top of his head. “It’s going to be okay.”

“We’re broken,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

“We are not,” she pokes his cheek. “Every family has problems. We just have to keep trying.”

“Alex’s family is broken. They’re all jerks.”

“They are massive jerks,” she agrees. “And he didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was. But that’s why he came to us, isn’t it? Because he knew our family loved each other as much as we love him now.” She smooths the bangs back from his forehead. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll talk to Dad tomorrow. But _you_ have to do the apologizing.”

His voice is small and timid. “Okay.”

“And while we’re at it, you have to do me one more favour.” He peers up at her curiously with his watery eyes, and the familiar shadow of childlike wonder on his face makes her smile. “You have to put the star on the tree for me because I’m not tall enough to reach the top.”

He grins cheekily, and she tackles him into a tickle war before he can make a wisecrack about her height. “Mercy,” he gasps as she attacks his weakest point: the fabled soft spot under his knee. “I’ll do it! I’ll do it! You’re so annoying,” he complains, but there isn’t one flicker of heat behind his words.

She pokes his side one last time for good measure. “You love me and you know it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I hope you enjoyed. Please leave me a comment if you liked it, it really does make my day. Thank you for reading!


	5. What Is Lost Can Be Found; Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! Part two.  
> Thank you so much to everyone who sent me well-wishes in response to my note last chapter. It really meant the world to me, you have no idea <3
> 
> Oh also if my spelling of "pyjama" and random words with "u" (like "favour", or "colour") are weird to the Americans out there, it's because I'm Canadian, as previously mentioned.

**9:00.**

The floorboards are cold under her bare feet when she pads down the stairs the next morning. The house is curiously silent, a tell-tale sign that the boys are still in bed, and she takes a moment to appreciate the rare moment of peace before making her way into the kitchen.

Just as she’d expected, her father is seated at the dining table with a cup of coffee and a stack of unopened mail in front of him, but he isn’t sorting through the envelopes for the bills like he usually does. Instead, he keeps his gaze trained towards the entrance of their house, gaze flicking every now and then between the door and the front window.

“He came in late last night,” Ray jumps in his seat at the sound of her voice, turning to face her as she reaches into one of the cabinets for a glass.

“I didn’t hear the front door open,” his gruff voice blends with the squeak of the refrigerator door, teetering on the edge of thinly veiled relief and feigned indifference.

“That’s because Reggie taught him how to climb the oak tree,” she can’t help the smile that creeps across her lips, but a quick glance at her dad’s tense face has her directing her attention back to pouring her glass of orange juice with extreme precision.

“Did he say where he was?” She pretends not to hear the crack in his voice as she returns the juice to the fridge. He shuffles the untouched mail aside when she comes back to the table, slipping into her seat beside him and studying his face as she takes a long sip.

He looks like he hasn’t slept a wink all night, with dark circles under his eyes and new creases above his brow.

“Not exactly, but we did have a pretty long talk about why he left,” she tells him, making sure to keep her voice as light as possible.

Ray sighs. “You always were better at getting through to him than we were.”

“That’s not true,” she shakes her head. “You guys used to be close when we were younger.”

He barks out a laugh, the bitter sound ringing harshly in the still air. “Well, if you can tell me where _that_ Carlos went, I’ll gladly take him back.”

“He’s still in there,” she reminds him gently. “He just needs a little push in the right direction.”

“We’ve been pushing for years,” he shakes his head, running a hand wearily over his face. “I don’t know where I went wrong with that boy.” It comes out as barely a whisper.

Not for the first time, she feels the guilt wrenching itself into a knot in her stomach. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help more, Daddy.” It uncoils hesitantly as he brushes her loose curls back over one shoulder with an affectionate smile.

“You had to get away, mija. We understand.”

“I should have been there to help—”

“But maybe you wouldn’t have been able to help then like you are now, hmm? New experiences help to better equip us for challenges in the future.”

No matter how long she’s been away, somehow sitting at the table and receiving advice from her dad still feels like the most natural thing in the world. They used to do this every Saturday morning while everyone else was still in bed. She would sip a glass of orange juice while he made a pot of coffee, and then they would sit at the dining table while she regaled him with tales of pre-teen antics and hallway drama until Mom came down to start breakfast.

“Do you ever think that maybe we’re too hard on Carlos?” She asks softly. He raises an unimpressed eyebrow that has her rushing to elaborate before he can answer. “He told me one of the reasons he always lashes out is because he feels smothered. Maybe the easiest way to get him to want to be around the house is to just trust that he’s doing the right thing.”

“Julie, he was arrested for breaking and entering last night. He talks back, he comes home late, if at all, he’s rude to your brothers, and he never listens to anything I say!” Ray’s voice raises in pitch with every word.

“And maybe that’s because we’ve never made him feel like we trusted him enough to do well on his own,” she pushes. She can’t get the image of Carlos crying on her bed last night out of her head.

Ray starts to give a snort that’s maybe a tad too sarcastic for a father to be directing at his child, then seems to realize who is seated in front of him and cuts himself off halfway through so it sounds more like a sneeze. “Your mother would’ve never let him turn out the way he did.”

“Well, I guess we’ll never know because she died when he was fourteen!” She snaps reflexively. Her voice crashes through the air like a rolling wave, washing over the tense silence that has now settled around them.

For a moment, she’s worried that she might’ve woken her little brother, who was still sleeping soundly in her bed when she got up. He asked her if he could hide out in her room for the night before they fell asleep, and she didn’t have the heart to say no. He must’ve snuck out at some point during the night, though, because their great-grandmother’s star is now perched securely at the top of the Christmas tree in the living room across from them.

The house is deathly quiet. Ray stirs his coffee blankly, his face drawn into a tight grimace.

She takes a deep breath, heartbeat racing in time with the short clinking of a metal teaspoon against the ceramic edge of her dad’s cup. _Luke said we can only stay together if we work together to do it._ She feels like she’s sixteen again, replaying Luke’s _chin up, Jules_ over and over again in her head to calm her nerves before a class presentation.

“I don’t know about you or the boys, but I know I wasn’t too worried about Carlos when Mom passed away,” she says as gently as she can. “He seemed fine. He was sad, but he kept his chin up and played soccer and pranked the boys to get them laughing. I never stopped to consider how many things he must’ve felt like he was missing out on with Mom.” Her dad’s grip tightens visibly on the spoon, and she reaches out to rest her hand gently on his wrist until his fingers slacken slightly. “You’re a great parent, Dad. You’ve always supported us and made us feel proud of who we are. You adopted two more teenage boys somewhere down the line, but I guess I’ll forgive you for that,” his lips twitch upwards at her teasing grin, “And I’ve always known that, no matter what, I am going to be okay because you and Reggie are going to be there for me.”

She leans forward to look him in the eye, and he turns his palm to catch her hand in his. She squeezes softly. “Mom always told us to take a leap of faith, right? Maybe it’s time for us to trust him, too.”

**11:00.**

It’s much later when the boys finally rouse from their beds, Reggie and Luke tumbling down the stairs towards the coffee maker and hollering something about pancakes. She joins them as they get to work on the batter, smacking Luke before he can toss flour in her face and taking the eggs away from Reggie before he can smash them over Luke’s head.

It’s complete chaos. An utter disaster. (She’s home.)

Carlos comes down a little while later, changed out of the clothes from his midnight escapade into a fresh hoodie and a pair of completely unflattering flannel pyjama pants. She snickers when she sees him, because if she couldn’t convince their dad that he doesn’t have plans to escape the house today for the first time in years, those pants definitely will.

He approaches their Dad at the dining table, his expression grim and contrite, and while she can’t quite make out the context of their low exchange, she’s rewarded for her efforts when Ray stands quickly to wrap his youngest son in a tight embrace.

“I heard your conversation with Dad earlier,” Reggie mutters cheerfully in her ear.

She glares at him playfully, “Prying ears, much?”

“You were loud enough to hear from the bathroom and you know I have a morning bladder!” He defends, poking her in the side. “So, what’s it like being Dad’s favourite child all the time?”

She just raises her eyebrows at him, turning her gaze to stare pointedly at their father and the youngest Molina, who are now both seated at the table and laughing loudly over what sounds like gameplay footage on Carlos’s phone.

“I wouldn’t know,” she tells Reggie, smiling broadly. “I always hated soccer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fell down HSMTMTS rabbit hole again this week, thanks to Olivia Rodrigo's Driver's License (if you haven't heard it yet, do so because it's fucking groundbreaking and has put her on the MAP) and I'm honestly considering writing an AU for that as well. If you guys have any fic recommendations for me to read, please leave them in a comment along with your thoughts on this chapter!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> PS. Madison Reyes hit 1M on instagram and she did a live where she sang Unsaid Emily??? I'm dead it was perfect.


	6. Almost (is never enough)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry.

**14:00.**

“What if I made this snowman into, like, a massively powerful lord of the undead, but also the Greatest Showman, if he was gay and ran a Roaring 20’s style nightclub?”

Julie is finding it increasingly difficult to take Alex’s ideas seriously considering the amount of powdered sugar slurry shots he and Willie have consumed in front of her in the last hour. The six of them (her and her brothers plus Luke and Willie) have spent the afternoon making a complete mess of the kitchen in the name of Christmas Cheer (that is, baking enough sugar cookies to build a life sized model of the Hollywood sign).

Despite the chaos that has spun through their house today, she feels lighter than she has in years. She surveys the scene as Alex guides Willie's hands on a bright purple piping bag over their latest creation, giggling wildly in an attempt usurp control from each other for the title of the Icing King (she’s decided it’s in her best interest not to ask). On the other side of the counter, Reggie and Carlos are holding what looks like a contest to find the most radioactive food colouring combination. There are bits of neon green smeared across Carlos’s cheeks, while streaks of Pepto-pink somehow coat the vast majority of Reggie’s forearms. She’s going to have to spray them both down with a hose later, she knows, but she can’t bring herself to worry about the mess when her family is finally whole again and happy, if only for the moment.

She feels a warm body brush against her from behind, a large hand pressing itself to the small of her back before moving away again. She fights the smile that threatens to split her face, instead pushing up the sleeves of Luke’s worn Bobcat’s crewneck (she swiped it from him at breakfast with the help of her best puppy dog eyes and Luke’s obvious lack of sleep) and pretending to concentrate on adding the finishing touches to the cookie in front of her; a geometric snowflake that she’s painstakingly decorated to look like the sundrop flower from Tangled. Luke has been doing this since breakfast, purposely making a mess of himself with flour and icing as an excuse to squeeze behind her designated cookie station to wash his hands at the sink.

This time, though, she spins around on his way back, catching him off-guard and reveling in the audible way his breath stutters in his throat as his fingers steady themselves against her waist.

“Getting a little too excited over there?” She teases. He looks adorable, with flour dusting his (still sleeveless) shirt and patches of bright blue icing spattered across the side of his jaw.

“Reg was hoping he could mix all the colours together and not end up with brown if he avoided the green,” he tells her, by way of explanation.

She hums. “And how did that work out for you?”

“I’m pretty sure he forgot the rule of secondary colours, so he added blue and yellow anyway.” She loses the battle on keeping a straight face, laughing as Luke points to the bowl of mud in question by Carlos’s elbow with a resigned sigh and a silly eye-roll.

“You’ve got something on your face,” she steadies herself on his bare shoulder with one hand (and definitely does not pay any attention to the subtle way the muscle flexes under her fingertips), rising up onto her tiptoes to wipe away some of the icing on his cheek with the base of her palm. She cleans her hand on the side of the only apron she managed to find amidst the baking supplies in the pantry, raising her eyebrows at the pensive look on his face.

“What?”

“I don’t think it counts as cleaning if we just trade icing stains, Jules,” he tells her, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

“I don’t think it counts as trading if you’re a mess and I’m completely clean, thank you very much,” she retorts playfully, but the indecipherable look in his eyes has her somewhat on edge.

He takes a step towards her, closing the gap between them until her chest is nearly flush with his and she is holding her breath, trying to slow her heart rate from where she’s pretty sure he can hear it trying to hammer its way out of her chest. She stares up at him, mouth agape, as he lifts his index finger to her nose, swiping it against the tip with all the pressure of a butterfly wing (and if Julie makes some kind of choking noise in the back of her throat at the dark look in his eyes, that’s nobody’s business but hers). His finger comes away covered in yellow, and any logical train of thought she might’ve previously possessed goes out the window when he brings the offending digit to his mouth and wraps his lips around it, sucking it clean.

She doesn’t know if it was a conscious choice, but she has no recollection of pulling her bottom lip between her teeth until Luke’s gaze snaps down from her wide eyes to her mouth. Despite how many years she’s spent honing her breath control for the sake of belting high notes in concert, she thinks her lungs might just give out when his pink tongue darts out to wet his lips.

She’d let him kiss her right now if he wanted to, and maybe that’s the scariest part.

“Gross, dude, that’s my sister,” Reggie’s loud complaint crashes through the moment with all the force of a moving train.

Luke jolts away from her like she’s on fire. They return to their cookie stations on opposite ends of the kitchen, avoiding the piercing (in Carlos’s case, mostly confused) gazes from the other boys. She’s pretty sure the flush flooding her cheeks could rival at a harvest festival for Best Tomato, gripping the edge of the counter until the jelly mess that is her lower body is ready to support her weight again.

Mercifully, Willie breaks the awkward silence before she can manifest a hole in the ground to open up and swallow her. “So, Julie, did Alex tell you about the party tomorrow night?” She’s so glad this man is more-than-likely-probably marrying into this family, because nobody else has mastered the art of cheery nonchalance that Willie has (and with the Molina’s foot-in-mouth track record, it’s a skill they sorely need).

“He hasn’t, no,” she meets Alex’s eyes warily. To her relief, they’re sparkling with amusement rather than the accusatory glint she’d been expecting. He gives her a small shrug, as if to say, _“we’re used to it”._

“Kayla’s throwing a Christmas party at her place, since apparently you’re not the only one back in town.” There’s a small grimace on his face.

“I didn’t know she moved away,” she’s honestly not as surprised as she should be, given the circumstances. She and Carrie didn’t exactly make plans to keep in touch after graduation, but Julie’s willing to bet that if Carrie moved away after high school it was for NYU’s theatre and performance program. In middle school, Carrie had wallpapered an entire section of her closet door in pamphlets and posters from various student productions her dad had taken her to.

“Yeah. New York, I think.”

She’s saved from having to feign surprise when Reggie’s voice cuts in. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, Julie.”

“I know,” she shrugs, holding his gaze for a moment as he searches her face for any sign of uncertainty. “It’s not a big deal,” she tells him reassuringly.

“Are you going to be okay if I invite her to the charity show on Christmas Eve?”

“Dude,” Reggie shoots Alex a sour look.

“What? I told Kayla she could bring her friends, and it’s _pretty_ likely she’s going to bring Carrie and Nick,” the blonde protests.

“Don’t worry so much about me,” Julie cuts in before Reggie can go off on one of his Protective Big Brother tangents. She makes sure to catch Luke’s concerned eye when she says, “I’ll have you guys with me, so I’ll be okay. It’ll be fun!”

The warmth in his smile is almost enough to make her believe it.

**19:00.**

_If I wanted to know who you were hanging with_

_When I was gone, I would’ve asked you_

_It’s the kind of cold, fogs up windshield glass_

_But I felt it when I passed you_

_There’s an ache in you put there by the ache in me_

The piano keys are cool to the touch under her fingers. After all the time she’s spent rebuilding bridges in the last few days, playing alone in Mom’s studio feels like a last stand kind of homecoming. It’s a promise— to herself, and to her mom—that she’s here to stay. She’s already decided to move back to L.A. after graduation next year; she just hasn’t found the right time to tell her family yet.

_We could call it even_

_You could call me babe for the weekend_

_‘Tis the damn season, write this down_

_I’m stayin’ at my parents house_

_And the road less travelled looks real good now_

_And it always leads to you in my hometown_

Her mind wanders to Luke and their exchange earlier today. She’s become increasingly aware that the rest of her family isn’t as clueless as she’d like them to be concerning the state of her love life. If she’s being honest with herself, she knows that it’s her own fault. Somewhere down the line, the bubbly feeling that fizzed in her lungs whenever Luke was around evolved into a constant simmer beneath her skin. Somewhere down the line, Luke went from “Mom’s Godson” to “Reggie’s Best Friend” to _hers_. And sure, they’ve dated other people (she’ll never forget how he looked in that tux when he took Allison Bailey to his senior prom), but none of her relationships in Vancouver ever stretched the span of more than a few months, not when she could hear his voice in her head before every presentation, every first date, every bad day (“Chin up, Jules. You got this!”).

_Sleep in half the day just for old times' sake_

_I won't ask you to wait if you don't ask me to stay_

She isn’t sure if it’s a sign of weakness, that every choice she’s ever made has been impacted by someone else. But she knows she sure as shit isn’t ready to give up the one constant she’s had all her life.

_And the heart I know I'm breakin’ is my own_

_To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known_

_We could call it even_

_Even though I’m leavin’_

_And I’ll be yours for the weekend_

_Tis the damn season._

She feels his presence a split second before she hears the rustle of his jeans, the spark in her chest whirring to life. She turns around, swinging her legs over the side of the piano bench to face him where he’s lingering behind her.

“Hey,” she isn’t sure if there’s a quiver in her voice, but she thinks there might be.

“Hi,” his voice is soft, using that tone that she knows is specially reserved for her. “You were singing.”

“I was,” she agrees. He drifts closer, hovering in the space between her knees, and out of habit she reaches for the hem of his shirt, rolling the cotton between her fingers. He slides a hand through her curls, cradling her jaw in his palm as she sighs.

“You’re amazing,” he says, and the earnest way he smiles at her is enough to make her heart crack. It sounds like porcelain and pennies, a ringing bathtub of loose change.

“I’m going to miss you,” the words slip from between her lips before she can stop them, coarse and dry, and they settle themselves into the crease that furrows itself above his eyes.

“You’ll be back soon, Jules,” he reminds her, smile still playing cautiously on his lips. “You could always come home for the summer, you know.”

She shakes her head, her fingers slipping from the hem of his shirt to gesture between them. “I meant you. _This_.”

He’s no longer smiling. “I’m not going anywhere,” he tells her slowly, “Are you?”

She doesn’t answer, and her gut twists at the panic that laces his voice, “Are you?”

“We can’t keep doing this, Luke.”

“Don’t do this—”

“—It’s not healthy—”

“Jules, _please_ ," his voice is hedging on desperate.

“—I can’t _be_ this for you anymore.” She doesn’t know what hurts more, watching the light dim in his narrowed eyes or the way he backs away from her, his hand falling away from her jaw to hang limply at his side.

The clock on the wall ticks loudly in the sudden silence, counting the seconds it takes for him to process what’s happening. _One. Two. Three. Four. It’s only been four seconds and she already aches for his touch._

But this is for this best, so she steels herself against the bitter laugh that rumbles low and harsh from his chest. “So I guess that’s it, huh? You’re back for three days and you’re bored with me already?”

“You know that’s not why,” she pushes back, and the sting of his quick assumption does nothing to quell the spark of sour indignance in her throat.

“Do I? Do _you_?” There’s a bite to his tone she’s never heard before, his voice rising with every new accusation. “Because I’ll tell you what I think: I think you’re scared. I think you’re more afraid of being honest with yourself than you are of being with me and you’re running, because that’s what you always do.”

“Oh, right. Because you’re the fucking guidebook to emotional intelligence now, aren’t you?” She spits. “Because you somehow know exactly what I want at all times?” She pushes herself up from the bench, taking a few steps forward to get right in his face.

He throws his arms in the air in exasperation. “I don’t know what you want, _Julie_ ,” and the sound of her full name falling from his lips for the first time since they were kids is enough to send her over the edge, “So why don’t you tell me instead of expecting me to play along with your fucking mind games?”

“I want _to choose!_ ” she screams, and her voice tears itself from her throat, ricocheting into the rafters above. “For once in our miserable fucking lives, Luke, we get to pick who we’re going to lose! We’re not kids anymore. This isn’t _playing house_. And I don’t want this if I know we’re just going to end up hating each other in the end!”

The silence that stretches between them feels like it’s growing; a wide, blank sheet that spans too far for her to cross it. On the other side, Luke’s eyes are dull and unfocused, his mouth set in a hard line.

“That’s how you feel?” The frigidity of his voice settles in her bones (and this feels _wrong, wrong, wrong)_ and the simmer beneath her skin is now a roaring inferno, screaming for him with every new tick of the clock.

She opens her mouth to say something, say _anything_ —and closes it again, swallowing the lump in her throat. Because he’s right, isn’t he? She _hasn’t_ been honest with herself, _but_ _she’s trying now_. And part of that honesty means letting him go, because the sharp ache of losing Luke like this is nothing, nothing compared to how it would feel to drive him away for the rest of her life because she wasn’t enough to hold his attention.

“Okay then,” he breathes, and the finality of his tone rings like a gong under her ribs, rattling low in her gut and pounding harshly through her ears. And then he’s gone, a wisp of smoke through the gap in the doors, the distant roar of a battered engine, muddy tires crunching on the gravel as his van tears away from the sidewalk.

It’s not until she can’t hear him anymore that she realizes she’s moving, climbing numbly up the ladder to the loft. She doesn’t blink until she’s curled up on her side in the corner of her mom’s favourite writing cushion, and then the tears are spilling down her face, streaking salt across the bridge of her nose and soaking through her hair. This time, there’s no Luke to hold her until the waterworks end. This time, there’s no one to put her back together when she’s done falling apart.

 _It feels like a goodbye._ And maybe it is, but at least this way she knows he isn’t leaving her because he doesn’t love her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I broke my own heart with this one, ngl.  
> (and yes, that is how I describe Caleb lmao)
> 
> Songs that I pulled as mood inspiration for this chapter: Driver's License (obviously), Tis the Damn Season (also duh), Almost is Never Enough, and Breakeven.
> 
> To the readers that comment every chapter: this one is for you. Thank you so much for your constant support and interest in my work <3 it means the world to me.


	7. Better Wake Those Demons (just look them in the eye)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being 8.5k and I have no idea how it got that way lol. It's a scene that I've been super excited to write since I posted Chapter 2 back in December, and in my opinion it's one of the most important scenes of the entire story. Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion from the last chapter.
> 
> I've got a lot to say this time around, but we'll leave that for the end notes. For now, enjoy the chapter!
> 
> Oh! one more thing:  
> TRIGGER WARNING: Panic attacks and dissociation. Also this chapter gets a little bit steamy so if you are under the age of consent please be mindful! You'll notice I've changed the rating to M.

**December 23, 2020. 11:00. 2 Days to Christmas.**

Reggie Molina is arguably the best bass player in East Hollywood. He played centre-forward on the community soccer team from ages eight through thirteen, he somehow half-assed his way through AP Calc senior year and walked out with nothing less than an A-minus (Julie’s still salty about that one), and the general consensus amongst their extended family is that their eldest cousin is a wizard in the kitchen.

Reggie Molina is a talented, intelligent, compassionate older brother. But he’s got less subtlety in his whole body than most toddlers have in their left earlobes, and that is why Julie is two seconds away from throwing her fork at him when he _wont stop fucking staring at her_ from where he’s sprawled out on the end of her bed.

“Stop it!” She briefly considers flicking a glob of maple syrup at him before dropping her wrist listlessly. She doesn’t have the energy to antagonize her brother today, not when she feels like the living aftermath of a hurricane.

“I’m not doing anything!” He protests, but she knows he’s lying, because his voice is doing that thing where it gets all high pitched and his nostrils are flaring with every word.

She’s pretty sure he and Alex are already fully aware of what went down last night. After her tears subsided, she’d managed to crawl her way back into the house some time after midnight. There had been no sign of Luke’s van in the driveway, just Mrs. Kitchener’s silver Prius parked in his usual spot by the curb. Her brother’s bedroom door had been closed, for once, and although she could hear his unintelligible murmurs through the wall, she hadn’t been able to make out any kind of response. She hadn’t been surprised in the slightest, then, when Reggie shook her awake from her fitful sleep hours later, urging her to sit up with a stack of blueberry pancakes drowned exactly the way she likes in an ocean of maple syrup.

Julie doesn’t know if food counts as a love language, but if it does then it is definitely Reggie’s.

She shovels a forkful of pancake into her mouth as ungracefully as she can, rolling her eyes half-heartedly at the disgusted look that slinks over her brother’s face. Serves him right. One time, he was so busy chatting during dinner that he spit out a half chewed glob of grey mush onto the table and then proceeded to _pick it up and put it back into his mouth while he kept talking_. To this day, she can’t look at a Shepard’s pie without wanting to hurl.

He keeps staring, his eyes boring into her and scorching twin holes through the side of her forehead. “If you’re going to ask me about it, you might as well get it over with,” she snaps, dropping her fork with a clatter.

He has the decency to look guilty. “I just want to know what happened, Jubilee,” and the use of her childhood nickname makes her feel like she is six years old again, crying into his lap while he bandages her scraped knees under the jungle gym.

She stares down at the plate in her lap, tilting it this way and that to watch the puddle of syrup swirl. “What did he tell you?”

Reggie runs his hand wearily over his face. “He didn’t tell me anything. Alex called me at two in the morning to tell me Luke showed up at his apartment, shitfaced and refusing to tell him anything about how he got that way. Considering he was fine the last time I saw him, which was about ten minutes after he said he was going to find _you_ , we figured the only possible explanation for his late-night adventure would be that you guys had a fight.”

The simmer underneath her skin has stopped, as if frozen permanently in place by the chill of Luke’s parting words. For the first time in days, Julie feels raw and exposed, devoid of the perpetual warmth of Luke’s constant orbit, her ever-faithful sun. Reggie reaches out to place a hand on her ankle, ice-cold despite the layers of blankets she’s burrowed herself under.

“I told him—” She twists the sheets under her fingertips nervously. How exactly does a girl tell her older brother about her relationship drama with his best friend?

_Hey, you know how I’ve been madly in love with Luke since middle school, but then he left for that year-long music program abroad and while he was gone our Mom died and I fled the country? Yeah, well, turns out I’m still in love with him and he might like me back now, except if I date him and it doesn’t go well it might ruin our friendship so instead I broke his heart last night and sent him into a downward spiral._

Yeah. That’ll never work, so she settles on, “I told him we were getting too close as friends and we should probably keep our distance from now on.”

Reggie makes a choked noise that sounds like he tried to gasp and sigh at the same time. “Why the hell would you do that?”

She just sighs, stabbing her fork into another bite of pancake with more force than necessary. “I’m moving home after grad next year.”

The baffled look on her brother’s face clears away immediately. “Really?” She nods, a small smile twitching at her lips. Reggie beams at her, bouncing up and down on her mattress with all the grace of a kindergartener. “Dude! That’s awesome! Have you told Dad yet? Have you told Carlos? Have you told Alex? Have you told—" Reggie cuts himself off abruptly.

The smile slips off her face. “I told him,” she says quietly, shrugging away his apologetic grimace. “It’s just you two, though.”

“Okay,” he says slowly, and she can see the gears whirring in his head. Why does everyone look at her like she’s some kind of calculus equation? “I’m still having trouble understanding how your move home relates to Luke’s sudden desire to be a hungover zombie.”

“Because, “ she presses insistently, trying to keep the defensive edge from creeping into her voice, “It was great catching up since I thought I was only home for the week, but if things get _weird,_ ” she hesitates for split second, “It’ll just make it that much more awkward when I move back permanently.”

“Ah,” the sage look in her brother’s eyes makes her wary. His expression entirely too knowing when he asks, “So this is about the fact that Luke is obviously in love with you.”

The fact that it comes out as a statement instead of a question has her bristling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snaps back, just a little too quickly.

She’s honestly kind of surprised he’s noticed. Aside from their little display in the kitchen yesterday, she’s pretty sure they’ve been good about keeping their not-relationship low profile.

He just shrugs. “Alex and I aren’t blind, you know. You guys have acted like an old married couple since we were teenagers. We just don’t talk about it because you guys treat it like you’re trying to keep some big secret.”

She shakes her head violently, as if trying to erase the mere thought with the tip of her nose. “He’s not in love with me.”

“You’re kidding, right?” The look he shoots her is equal parts exasperated and incredulous, “He follows you around like a lost puppy. When you were gone he asked about you like once a week.”

“Well then, why didn’t he ever message me?” At this point, she’s very nearly toppled her plate over several times in her frustration, so she reaches to set it down on the side table before letting out a long breath. She folds her hands in her lap, clutching at her fingers until her knuckles are white in an attempt to regain some sort of composure and trying not to appear as if she’s _completely_ fallen apart in the last twelve hours. “We haven’t met up or spoken to each other in _years,_ Reg. And then I come home for three days and we’re suddenly acting like this— this _couple_ , as if the last time I saw him I didn’t humiliate myself in front of the entire school and he didn’t—” her jaw clicks shut with an audible _snap_.

Unfortunately, the universe doesn’t seem to be very happy with her today, so of course her little slip-up doesn’t go unnoticed. Her brother prods her in the shoulder with narrowed eyes. “He didn’t what? What did he do?’”

“It’s nothing,” she mumbles, trying to pull the comforter over her head, but Reggie pounces on top of her, wrestling the sheet away in a surprising show of strength for someone built like a stick of string cheese.

“You’re a fucking mess,” she growls, and he pokes her in the side until she throws a pillow at his face with more force than necessary.

He bats it away with one hand. “I’m your brother. It’s my job to piss you off. Now tell me or I will dump those pancakes in the garbage,” he threatens.

Her eyes grow wide. “You _wouldn’t._ ”

“He who giveth can taketh away,” he intones with deadly severity. “And you suck at dealing with your problems on your own, clearly. Tell me or I will throw them away and eat the rest of the batch myself.”

If Reggie’s love language is food, Julie’s is the way she whacks her brother’s shoulder every time he does something stupid, like right now. Despite the minor assault, he’s still staring at her with an unnerving expression that reminds her vaguely of the hamster that Gordon Chow brought to show and tell in elementary school, when they held it too long and it got stressed out, its large eyes bulging uncomfortably out of its tiny face.

She mumbles under her breath.

“What?” Curse Reggie and his stupid shitty ears. She always told him not to play so close to the amp growing up, but he never listened, of course, and now he’s going to be hard of hearing by the time he’s twenty five.

“Seriously, Julie, what?”

She throws her hands in the air in exasperation. “He kissed me, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Luke fucking kissed me after I ran out on Senior Homecoming looking like a total fucking dweeb, and we’ve spent this whole week acting like it didn’t happen and he didn’t just ghost me after kissing me and then leaving the country six months before our Mom died. So yeah. I’m a little salty.”

Reggie’s mouth opens and closes wordlessly several times.

***

On a normal day, Julie doesn’t mind the chaos. She loves the bright colours of the Los Feliz hallways: the sea of students dressed in patches of maroon and electric blue, the walls papered with posters for various events and extracurriculars, the open lockers decorated with streamers and pictures of teenagers at the mall or the skate park with their arms slung casually around each other’s necks. On a normal day, Julie would be diving into the thick of it, calling out to her classmates with her signature sarcasm and cheering for the end of an excruciatingly long week. After all, this is her first semester as a senior in the halls of Los Feliz and her last October spent labouring over her midterm notes in the corner of the adjacent library building. She should be celebrating, she knows.

But today doesn’t feel like a normal day. Today, there are exactly thirteen days until her best friend leaves for a year-long study abroad program at the Royal College of Music in London, and exactly three hundred and eighty three days until he boards a flight back to her.

She’s happy for him, she really is. Luke is an incredibly gifted guitarist and vocalist, his ability as a lyricist second to only her mom (and maybe herself, but only when she sits down to write a song with him). He’s also more committed to his dream than anyone she knows, practicing in their studio all hours of the night and working his ass off to get Sunset Curve as much exposure and as many opportunities as he possibly can. Hell, she was the one who encouraged him to audition for the scholarship in the first place, never mind the fact that he never applied to any college after he graduated from Los Feliz. And just like she predicted, the London RCM had sent him an email not two weeks after his audition tape was submitted, inviting him to join the handful of other international students at their campus in November.

She’s super proud of Luke. It’s just that she’s going to miss him. A lot.

“Hey Julie!” A pretty Asian girl skips up to her locker, jarring her out of her reverie. Kayla’s purple binder is loud against her Bobcats cheerleading uniform, so full of lined paper and rainbow tabs it looks like it might burst out of her hands at any moment.

“Hey Kayla,” Julie manages to muster nearly as much, if not an equal amount of pep. “You’re in a good mood.”

“That’s because I have something to tell you that is going to make. Your. Year,” she says, her voice dropping as she leans in conspiratorially.

“Someone finally ratted out the basketball team for ‘upping their shooting game’ by throwing tinfoil balls at the heads of freshman in the parking lot?” Julie really does feel bad for those kids. To be fair, it was a group of little shits that decided it would be a good idea to establish their reputations by spitting their gum at the captain of the senior varsity team. Five thirteen-year-olds trying to look tough against a team of fifteen seniors was a pretty comical sight. Needless to say, they’ll be used as target practice every lunch period until the end of the year (that is, as long as next year’s captain decides not to carry on the legacy).

Kayla shakes her head. “What? No, don’t be ridiculous. Rumour has it Nick is going to ask you to Homecoming!” Kayla squeals, her excitement overriding her need for suspense. Her smooth voice ricochets off the bank of lockers and into the cacophony of the hallway crowd. Julie winces.

“Are you sure? Do you know when?” She can’t help the dread that creeps into her tone.

An incredulous frown spreads over Kayla’s usually sunny expression. “Do you not want him to? Julie, this is _Nick._ Blond? Quarterback? The same Nick you’ve had a crush on since freshman year?”

It’s Julie’s turn to frown. Yes, it’s true that Nick is one of the most popular guys at Los Feliz, and _yes,_ she and Carrie may have been his number one fangirls in ninth grade (after Julie slipped in a puddle of chocolate milk in the cafeteria and Nick caught her like some kind of fairy tale hero), but Carrie’s always been more into him than Julie ever has. Despite the fact that they’ve grown apart in the last few years, what with Carrie’s near constant cheer practices and they way Julie insists on splitting every spare minute between band practice and her mom, she feels a little guilty knowing Nick wants to ask her instead of her former best friend.

Julie and Carrie may be not be besties forever, but she would never do her dirty like that.

She doesn’t know how much Carrie has told Kayla, though, despite the fact that they’ve been on the cheer squad together for the last three years, so she just says, “I actually already have a date.”

 _“What?”_ Kayla screeches, this time loud enough to send the crowd around them cringing back in surprise. “Who?”

Julie just shrugs, unfazed, “Trevor from Chemistry.”

“Trevor from Chemistry, with whom you have absolutely zero real-life chemistry with?” Kayla’s voice has not lowered an inch, so Julie grabs her elbow and steers her down the hallway into an alcove by the stairs.

“Trevor from Chemistry, who asked me first and has nothing but good things to say about my brothers’ band,” she tells her sternly, raising a warning eyebrow as she sees Kayla gearing up to shriek again.

The other girl rolls her eyes, lowering her voice into an exaggerated stage whisper. “Julie! You can’t turn down the _quarterback_ for one of those weird band creeps!”

“Hey!” She protests, _“I’m_ one of those weird band creeps, thank you very much.”

Kayla waves her hand dismissively. “You’re too cool to be a band creep. You and your brothers are just weird band nerds. The band creeps are the groupies, the ones that stalk the band everywhere and take advantage of their hot younger sisters so they have a chance at becoming part of the band before murdering the sisters in the parking lot.”

“You’ve been watching too many dramas.”

“I’m just saying! Nick is a nice guy. And if you turn him down, he’s going to ask Carrie and you’ll never get another chance.”

“So let him ask Carrie!” She’s really tired of having people think she and Carrie had some kind of massive falling out just because Carrie is cheer captain now. It doesn’t help that Carrie’s always had a reputation for being petty. “It’s not like we’re mortal enemies! We used to be friends; we just don’t hang out anymore.”

She knows by the look on her face that Kayla doesn’t believe her one bit.

“I know you love the drama,” she says, giggling as Kayla flips her hair over her shoulder with a theatrical toss of the head, “But I promise you, _nothing_ _happened_ between me and Carrie. If you see Nick, tell him to ask her to homecoming. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

***

Julie is, once again, completely flabbergasted by her own inability to anticipate how much she would not want to be here tonight. Instead of lounging in her pyjamas in her Mom’s studio, she’s perched on the steps leading up to the stage on one side of the school’s large gymnasium, the puffy skirt of her dress spread about her in a violet halo. The dim room is packed with dozens of bodies, all draped in suits and skirts in bright, cheerful colours. It kind of reminds her of an M&M commercial, she grins to herself, watching the shimmering rainbow of tulle and satin shift in and out of focus under the neon strobe lights that have been set up around the room.

Her smile falters slightly as she spies Emma Rodriguez on the other side of the crowd, looking equally awkward and embarrassed in her blue sundress. Julie watches as Emma seems to shrink back against the far wall in the perfect picture of a wallflower, her thick chestnut hair falling in a curtain around her face to avoid catching anyone’s eyes.

She could go over there and talk to her, Julie supposes. That would at least save them both the trouble of dragging their friends away from their dates in the crowd in an effort to not look like total losers. Then again, she doesn’t want Emma to feel like she’s ditching her when Trevor finally shows up, so she just sighs and resignation and settles back in her seat, trying to ignore the growing pit of irritation in her stomach at the fact that her date is over forty-five minutes late.

There is one consolation for her current position, though, and that is the welcome fact that she is not entirely alone. On the stage to her immediate left is none other than her favourite neighbourhood rock band, currently bouncing around and hyping up the crowd with an energetic performance of Now or Never.

She knows it must be weird for her boys to be back at Los Feliz considering they graduated three years ago, but as the most successful alumni to leave the nest in the last decade it was inevitable that every prom and homecoming committee chairperson would be begging Sunset Curve to headline their events in the following years. Still, she’s really glad that Luke pushed Reggie and Alex to accept the invitation for once, insisting that there’s nothing else he’d rather do on his last night in town than make sure her last ever homecoming has “bangin’ music”. At the very least, people will think she’s sitting by the stage in support of them.

Alex catches her eye from behind his drum set, wincing sympathetically. She just shrugs and rolls her eyes in resignation. It’s probably better this way. Trevor is nice, but she wasn’t all that into him to begin with and it would be super awkward to let him down in the middle of a dance if he decided to ask her out.

Her gaze switches to Reggie, who is playing his bass rather aggressively, even for the level of energy usually required to sell the chorus to the audience. He glances at her and then pointedly glares out at the crowd, and she sighs again.

Yeah. Being stood up is still infinitely less embarrassing than it would be to have Reggie try to intimidate her date with his Overprotective Big Brother act.

The only person who seems to be happy about the situation is Luke, who is currently bounding about the stage with his usual bravado. His trademark lopsided grin had faded into a pinched expression every time she and Alex brought up Trevor in the last couple of weeks (Alex was the one who helped her pick out her dress for the dance, insisting that the leather jacket would give her an “awesome rocker chick kickass vibe”. He was right). She was puzzled by the unusual behaviour, but when she asked him he only turned away and muttered something about indecency and shotguns.

Alex had just laughed and told her not to worry about it.

Another ten minutes passes, and Julie has all but decided she’s going to leave if he doesn’t show up by the end of the next song when she catches a glimpse of Trevor’s self-important smirk entering through the archway of the far door. She sighs, heaving herself to her feet. She waves quickly to her boys (and does not stop to ponder the implications of the way Luke’s cheer seems to have drained wholly from his body) and marches away in the direction of her extremely tardy date.

She braces herself for the onslaught of sweaty teens as she navigates her way through the crowd, but to her surprise, every person she comes across seems to give her a wide berth, sending her wary looks and whispering to their companions.

She smooths down the hem of her dress subconsciously, not really understanding why nearly every person in her class looks equal parts scandalized and pitying.

As far as she knows, she’s pretty well liked by everyone.

She doesn’t understand the whispers, not until she’s nearly reached her destination and the last awkward classmate has scuttled out of the way, and then her gaze falls on Trevor – more specifically, the blonde sophomore hanging adoringly off his arm – and the lipstick still smudged across his pompous face, and it all becomes abundantly clear.

The sudden off-key _screech_ of a guitar rings through the air, the drums cut off with a _clang_ and Reggie’s bass falls off beat. The music stops. She can feel Luke’s eyes boring into her from the stage on the other side of the room, watching the scene unfold.

If only the impolite half of the student body was whispering before, Julie is absolutely certain everyone in the room is watching her now. After all, nothing throws Sunset Curve off their game in the middle of a song. Nothing, except the bassist’s younger sister.

So Julie does the only thing that comes to mind. She laughs, a cold, cruel sound that reverberates harshly against the bleachers. “Is this supposed to be a joke?” She drawls sardonically, “Because I didn’t know wasting my time could be considered a worthy punchline.”

But Trevor, the ass, just fixes her with a mocking grin, “You should’ve seen your face when you walked up, it was worth it.”

“And what,” she bites, “Did I ever do to deserve it?” She can feel sting of angry tears pricking her eyes, but she clenches her jaw stubbornly until they’ve been willed away. She’s not going to give some self-important bastard (that has no impact on her life whatsoever) the satisfaction of upsetting her.

The lack of reaction on her part seems to spark his temper, which is not as gratifying as she thought it would be when he narrows his beady eyes and spits, rather loudly, “You walk around here acting like you own the fucking place. You pretend to be friends with everyone, as if anyone believes you actually care, and just because your brother is in an awesome band you think you have the right to go parading around the music program like you’re better than everyone else. Everyone here knows you couldn’t be half as talented as the rest of us in your wildest dreams. You don’t hang out with anyone outside of school, you never grace us with your presence unless you have something to gain, and you don’t bother responding to messages of anyone you deem unworthy. You’re _Julie fucking Molina_ , who’s so focused on being a perfect little saint that she can’t bear to lower herself to the level of the peasants around her.”

Her face is beet red, her blood roaring ferociously in her ears. She can feel her skin itching under the scrutiny of the hoard of people now staring at them in stunned silence. She’s never enjoyed being the centre of attention, especially not like this, and she can feel her knees quivering above the spot where she seems to have been cemented to the floor.

From somewhere far away, she thinks she hears the faint sound of cymbals crashing, followed succinctly by two solid objects that drop to the ground with a _thud_.

But Trevor isn’t done yet, leaning forward to jeer, “You know I’m right, Molina. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. After all, this whole thing wasn’t even my idea.” Her helpless gaze shifts to follow the line of his outstretched finger, and that is when her stomach drops.

Julie thinks she might throw up.

She knows she’s a big girl. She can handle a bully, even one as harsh and cruel as the one in front of her. She can handle an overdramatic sophomore, who probably won’t think she’s the shit by the end of winter break anyways, not after Trevor gets bored and probably ditches her for another shiny little thing because that is how guys like him work. She can even handle the uncomfortable stares of the surrounding student body, however unnerving they may be.

What Julie _cannot_ handle is the fact that Trevor’s slimy finger is pointing directly at Carrie Wilson, dolled up in a pink gown fit for a princess and wearing a look of utter shame on her pale face.

Time seems to slow down, ticking almost infinitesimally by the millisecond. The murmuring that surrounds them is disjointed and echoing and Julie is overcome with the strangest sense of disconnect, as if she were hearing it all from very far underwater.

Kayla, in her signature purple jumpsuit, is at Carrie’s right elbow, both hands clapped over her mouth in horror, while Nick’s white fedora hovers somewhere to her left, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.

None of them say a word. Carrie just stares back at her, their eyes locked, and despite her guilty expression there is something like steel in her gaze that tells Julie she probably isn’t very sorry at all. That realization sends her reeling, leaving her dizzy and unbalanced and feeling entirely alone as the painted linoleum swirls beneath her feet, because while she may loathe to admit it at this very moment Carrie’s opinion has always meant the world to her. And if this whole plan to publicly humiliate her really was Carrie’s idea, it means that every bit of sewage Trevor has just spewed out of his filthy mouth is what Carrie thinks, too.

In the flashing glare of the strobe lights, the red staining Trevor’s lips and teeth looks a lot like blood.

She’s sure the whole school can see her unravelling, the self-doubt a loose thread tearing itself to frayed bits in her chest, and it only makes her feel more on edge. Her chest is heaving in sprints and she’s gasping for air, and she really thinks she’s about to have a panic attack in front of the entire student body and wouldn’t that just be fantastic—

There’s a sudden blur of movement to her left, and something warm and solid catches her from behind just as she stumbles backwards. Somebody screams, a high, shrill pitch that pierces the air, and time comes rushing back in full force just as Alex’s fist connects squarely with Trevor’s too-large nose.

A lot of things happen at once. Trevor’s head snaps back at the impact, his whole body toppling into a graceless heap on the gym floor. The sophomore he’d brought with him falls to her knees by his head, shrieking hysterically and trying to staunch the flow of blood from his face with the hem of her white slip dress. She only succeeds in getting thoroughly soaked by it, but none of her laughing friends seem overly interested in helping her.

Luke’s familiar arms wrap themselves around her, one at her shoulders and the other encircling her waist, reeling her protectively back into his chest and rocking gently from side to side as if to soothe her.

She hadn’t realized she was still shaking, her breaths coming out in strangled pants as she struggles not to cry.

Alex slaps Reggie a high five with what is now considered his good hand, shaking out his split knuckles and grinning gleefully down at Trevor, who is clutching is bleeding nose with both hands and moaning incomprehensibly. Then the teachers have descended upon the scene, shouting above the uproar that has swallowed every student in attendance and trying to determine who, exactly, started the fight to begin with.

Luckily for the band, Reggie is adored by the faculty at Los Feliz as a whole, especially by the Calculus teacher, Mr. Hyde, who just happens to be the head chaperone for the night. All it takes is an apologetic grin on Alex’s part and Reggie’s tense proclamation that his poor _baby_ sister, honour roll recipient _Julie Molina,_ was being bullied to relieve their group of any further scrutiny on the matter.

They are, however, asked to leave for the night, to which all three boys just shrug and make to pack their equipment. They’d only been a couple songs away from finishing their set, anyway.

“Jules?” Luke’s voice is soft in her ear, as if he were speaking to a very small child. Which is pretty much exactly how she feels right now, so she won’t hold him against it. “Time to go, love.”

She can’t move her feet. She can’t do anything except watch as Reggie stalks towards Carrie like a panther to a field mouse, an uncharacteristically tight expression marring his gentle features.

Julie doesn’t remember ever seeing her brother quite so livid. Somehow, that makes her feel marginally better.

Reggie’s voice is low and fierce, but she hears it all the same. “You know, I always thought of you like another little sister,” he says, and Julie watches with some kind of detached fascination as the last steel edge of Carrie’s defiant expression crumples behind her wide eyes before he walks away.

“Get her out of here,” he instructs Luke, smoothing a paternal hand over his sister’s hair. “We’ll pack the equipment and meet you at the van.” Luke nods tersely, and Julie somehow manages to get to her feet to move well enough to be led from the gym. She’s glad the teachers are too busy berating the rest of the students for facilitating a fight for anyone to watch her retreat.

She’s so out of it by the time they make it to the parking lot that she nearly faceplants headfirst over the lip of the van’s open trunk while peeling off her jacket. It’s not particularly cold tonight, so Luke has decided they can just sit in the open cavity until Alex can haul his drum set back out to them.

She half expects Luke to smile or tease her with some dry remark, but he only scoops her up, his touch as gentle as the night breeze, and climbs into the trunk bed, settling her comfortably into his lap as he reclines against the back row of seats. Her curiosity overcomes her shock, then, and when she peers down at his face she’s only half surprised to see that he’s seething.

“Are you okay?” She ventures cautiously, not caring the least bit for her safety. She might be all cozied up with an incredibly attractive man in a deserted parking lot in the middle of the night, but this is Luke, and he has never once let her down.

To prove her point, Luke shifts their position to hold her a little closer before letting his head fall back against the seat with a muffled thud. “Am _I_ okay?” He barks out a cold laugh. “Jules, if you didn’t look like you were about to fall over I would’ve beat the shit out him myself.”

She rests her head against the dip in his broad shoulder, sighing heavily. “He’s not wrong,” she says, very quietly, and Luke jerks sharply away from her, his fingers catching her chin and tilting her face up rather forcefully to meet his eyes.

“He is absolutely wrong,” he says in angry, measured voice.

Julie feels about two inches tall. “But Carrie—”

“—Carrie’s been full of shit since the day you stopped being her moral compass,” he cuts in before she can finish the thought. Julie is quiet for a moment, the cold numbness fading away to something that feels like an ugly bruise, blooming right underneath her ribcage.

She’s never been in a serious relationship (most of them consisted of going on tepid dates to the movie theatre and making out against the hood of their parents’ car. None of them had lasted any longer than three months), but she briefly considers the idea that this must be what heartbreak feels like. She ponders, and then all at once she’s sure of it, because she can see the ache reflected in Luke’s molten gaze as her vision begins to flood.

Yes, this is what it feels like to have to give up someone you love.

She suddenly understands why her mother had insisted on giving Luke his space two years ago, because if her brothers were here with them right at this moment she thinks she might shatter under the force of their prying eyes.

Luke’s presses his lips to her temple, a habit he picked up a year or two ago when they had gone from family friends to partners in immature hijinks, cupping her face in both hands to wipe her tears away with the rough pads of his thumbs.

“But what if he’s right?” She whispers, and she isn’t sure what hurts more, the way Luke’s ire seems to crumble at the realization that she’s actually being serious, or the way he opens his mouth for the first time in his life to have nothing come out of it.

 _What if he’s right?_ Hisses like a mantra in the back of her mind like a basket of snakes, but she’s unable to discern whether she is the snake or the charmer, or if, maybe, she is simply the basket, stuffed to the brim with selfishness and only just failing to keep the lid on tight.

She doesn’t think she’s been overly arrogant. She knows she isn’t best musician in their program by far, but it had never occurred to her that she had only been admitted because of her brother’s influence.

Is that why the teachers have always seemed to go out their way to be nice to her? To give her indulgent smiles whenever she suggests a new adjustment for an arrangement, to let her browse the department’s extensive library of sheet music whenever she has a free period? Because they’ve pitied her?

Is that why her more gifted classmates have always asked to partner with her in group projects, because they’ve been going out of their way to make sure she won’t fall behind, and she, the self-centred fool, mistook that for being considered as someone with valid opinions?

Julie wouldn’t be a normal teenager if she didn’t have any insecurities, but she’s never fully doubted her own abilities or character before, not like this. Even now, wrapped up in Luke’s arms, she feels like she’s spinning out of a control on a jilted axis, unable to make sense of her own motivations for the past four years.

She had thought she was just making friends. She had thought she was spending time with her mother, who although isn’t in a terribly precarious situation at this very moment, was diagnosed with Stage Two leukemia last year. That has to count for something, doesn’t it? Is she wrong? Has she been using other people for her own benefit, only to ditch them when they needed her support?

The sick feeling swells in her stomach again, pushing itself up past her lungs and stuffing itself into what seems to be the growing pipe block in her throat.

“Hey, hey, shhhh, Jules. You’re okay,” Luke’s soothing voice breaks through the deafening cacophony in her head, the clashing screech of a thousand out-of-tune orchestras, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s hyperventilating, rocking back and forth on Luke’s lap and choking on her sobs as she gasps for air.

“Shhhh,” she all but falls forward, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, trying to anchor herself to his steady presence in an attempt to regain any semblance of control. “Shhhh, baby, you’re okay,” he coos, rubbing light circles against her back with one hand and holding her tightly to him with the other. “I’m here. I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be alright.”

She focuses intently on the way her cheek is pressed against his skin, trying to regulate her breathing to the slow, steady rhythm of his hands. Eventually, she manages to pull a full breath into her lungs, holding on to it desperately for a rushed count of three before she lets it go. And then another. And another, and eventually, her breathing returns to normal and her tears have subsided, leaving her cradled in his arms, slumped and boneless and utterly exhausted.

Luke is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, the gentle reverence in his tone is such a startling contrast from his earlier hostility that she twists her face to look at him. “I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re kind and generous and compassionate, not because you think it’s what’s expected of you, but because you genuinely care about the people around you. Not many people can say that.”

“But how do you know?” She whispers, and she hates how feeble she sounds in the blank stillness of the night.

He smiles then, and the lifting of his cheek causes the slight stubble of his chin to brush against her forehead. “Because you’re Julie,” he says simply. “Because I would’ve stayed a hermit in that loft forever if you hadn’t come and pulled me out of it. Because Alex would’ve been living in Arizona, pretending for the rest of his life to be a straight man, if it wasn’t for the fact that you got him to open up about his parents that day on the beach. Because you love your mom more than anyone else in the world, except for maybe your dad, and you’re willing to give up your entire social life your senior year of high school just to spend more time with her.”

She doesn’t know what to say. He shifts her in his arms, nudging her to sit up, and she does, leaning into the hand that cups her cheek like it’s a lifeline.

His eyes meet hers, urgent and full of insistent conviction, and she doesn’t think she’d have the willpower to tear her eyes away if she wanted to.

“You’re Julie,” he says again, “And I’ve told you before that you’re our lucky charm and I know you’ve never believed me, but it’s true. Our shows never feel truly _alive_ until you’re there, until I know that no matter how many riffs I muddle, no matter how many times my voice cracks, you are going to be there, cheering us on. You’re a better songwriter than I am. You’re a better singer than I’ll ever dream of being, and you’re so good at not realizing just how incredibly talented you are that it drives jealous shitbags like Trevor and Carrie fucking insane.”

This is Luke. Luke Patterson. Her closest confidante, her mother’s godson, and the best friend and bandmate of not one, but two of her older brothers.

She’s been wholly infatuated with him since she was thirteen. While he’s made it abundantly clear that he thinks she’s kind and good at being a musician, she knows she’ll never be the type of girl who’s capable of holding his attention. Julie isn’t stupid. She knows she’s not the runway bombshell that Carrie is, or a lithe athlete that moves with the seductive grace of a dancer, like Kayla. She’s just Julie, curvy in places that she doesn’t want to be and overly sarcastic when she’s too insecure to let people see how she really feels.

It’s almost comical, the irony with which Trevor managed to poke fun at her for everything except her one true insecurity—that for all her heart and talent, she’ll never be seen as beautiful.

She doesn’t know who leaned in or who stayed put, but the matter remains that Julie and Luke have drifted so close to each other that their noses are a sliver away from brushing at the tips. He still has her pinned under his gaze, his eyes flicking briefly downwards and then back up again, and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she’d closed her eyes for every game of spin the bottle, every drunken dare, every backyard experiment for the last four years and pretended that it was him, right in front of her and looking at her exactly the way he is right now.

It’s extremely bad timing. It’s a product of her poor judgement, and she’s most likely going to regret it by tomorrow morning. But, Julie decides, in the split second that it takes for Luke to lower his chin and press his full lips against hers, she doesn’t give a single fuck.

His mouth is warm and pliant against her own, lips holding hers for an extra beat at every pass and setting off a chain of fireworks in her belly that makes her giddy with desire. She should’ve known that kissing Luke wouldn’t be anything like the sloppy face sucking that she’s grown accustomed to with boys her age. He knows what he’s doing, for starters, sliding the hand at her back up her spine to cradle the nape of her neck, tilting her head backwards until her mouth slots properly against his. His tongue strokes hers, slow and unhurried, as if determined to prove that he isn’t going to push her boundaries.

But Julie’s had a pretty awful day, so she thinks she at least deserves to push _his_ boundaries a little bit.

She nibbles on his lower lip and draws it into her mouth with a flick of her tongue, and the startled groan that bursts forth sparks something like pride in her chest. So she does it again, sucking harshly on his tongue as it enters her mouth, winding her hands from their place on his shoulders beneath the hem of his shirt, and this time the moan that rumbles in his chest sounds a little more like desperation. _“Fuck,_ Jules,” he rasps in her ear, and then world spins a little and Julie finds herself laid out on her back beneath him. Before she can think about anything else he’s settled in between her knees and his face has dipped down to drag his teeth along the column of her throat and she’s lost, panting his name against the shell of his ear and clutching at the firm planes of his back.

His hands are twisted in the tulle of her skirt, his fingers just barely grazing her thigh where the hem is bunched up around her waist, and if he doesn’t touch her right now she might actually fucking explode.

“Luke,” it comes out as more of a breathy moan than a coherent sentence, “Please. _Please_ ,” she raises her hips to grind herself against him, tearing her name from his lips as moves to kiss her again. She tugs at the soft wisps of hair at the base of his neck, and then his calloused fingers are finally, _finally_ sliding across the bare skin of her hip, slipping beneath her to palm her ass and press her more firmly against him—

And then Luke pulls sharply away, propping himself up on his elbows to hover dazedly above her. They’re both panting heavily, and Julie has to shake her head several times to clear the fog from her mind before the reality of the situation sinks in.

Oh.

_Oh shit._

“Oh shit is right,” Luke groans, sliding a hand over his face and raking it through his messy hair. She hadn’t realized that she’d said it out loud. “You’re fucking dangerous, Julie Molina, did you know that?”

“Me?” She nearly shrieks. “You started it.” She knows she sounds like a petulant child, but at this very moment she doesn’t particularly care.

“Well, considering Alex and Reggie should be back in about five minutes, you’re lucky I didn’t try to finish, either,” he shoots back.

For the first time in almost fifteen years, neither of them know exactly what to say, and the awkwardness hangs in the air between them like a brick wall.

There’s a solid forty seconds of silence before Julie decides she can’t stand it anymore.

“Can you imagine their faces, though?”

The corners of his lips are twitching, but he doesn’t answer.

“You’re lucky you own this van. They’d leave you here otherwise.”

Still nothing.

“It’s a good thing Trevor wasn’t here. He tried to make me jealous with a _sophomore_ , like he doesn’t have wet dreams of Sunset Curve every night,” she snickers, and then Luke is laughing, clutching at his stomach with his head thrown back.

“Trevor only wishes,” he retorts easily, “But nobody in that gym could ever hold a candle to you, so I wouldn’t worry too much about him stealing me away.”

She wonders if he’s even aware that he’s just gone and upended her entire universe in a single sentence.

But then he’s rolling off of her to lay at her side, tucking his head into his designated spot on her shoulder and rambling something about demanding pizza as his last meal, and the moment is gone. Instead, she reminds him that he’s not dying, he’s actually going to a super prestigious music school in London on a full scholarship tomorrow and he should let her pick the toppings because she’s the only one who will remember him when he’s gone, and then he’s pouncing, engaging her in an all-out tickle war until Reggie and Alex have finally arrived, pushing between them a large dolly piled high with all their equipment.

Reggie pulls her off of Luke, who’s pretending to swoon like a damsel in distress, his eyes sparkling at her with equal parts mirth and affection.

Alex shakes his head, muttering something alone the lines of, “Fucking children,” just as Reggie dumps the remaining contents of his water bottle over his head.

They spend the next hour playing flashlight tag in the parking lot, and Julie spends the entire drive home looking anywhere but Luke, trying to convince herself that nothing has changed.

***

She gives Reggie the abridged version.

She might’ve been swept up in the memory as she recounted it, but she’d rather throw herself into a black hole than describe to her older brother the full details of how she nearly hooked up with his best friend in the back of their ratty tour van.

“So that’s it. He got on his flight to London the next day and we never talked about it again,” she finishes with a half shrug. “And I never told Mom about what happened at homecoming that night, because she was already sick and I didn’t want her to feel guilty for monopolizing all of my time.” Her eyes flash fiercely at Reggie, who is still struggling to pick his jaw up from the floor. “I don’t regret a single minute of it. When I look back at how I stopped going to club meetings, how I skipped every grad party and social event for the rest of the year just to be with her right up until the moment she died, I’m glad I chose to spend my time on something that actually mattered.” Her voice quivers a little at the end, but she doesn’t cry, and that’s enough for her.

Reggie seems to find his voice. “Can I give you my honest opinion?”

“I assume you’re going to anyway,” she shrugs, but she resigns herself to the idea that this might be a good thing. As immature and impulsive as he can be, she’s always trusted Reggie to be the voice of reason when it counts.

“It looks like maybe you and Luke just need to actually communicate instead of dancing around each other like a couple of insecure children.”

She takes it back. He has no idea what he’s talking about, and she never liked the idea of reason anyway. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He holds his hands up in surrender at her defiant scowl, seeming to understand she’s had enough heart-to-heart for one day. He pats her on the shoulder and rises from her bed, stopping briefly in the doorway to throw a mild, “Just think about it,” over his shoulder.

She doesn’t want to think about it.

She’s not going to think about it.

She pulls the almost-new songbook (a graduation present from her dad all those years ago) from her worn UBC backpack at the foot of her bed and turns to a fresh page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell absolutes and dramatic irony are my favourite literary devices? :P
> 
> This chapter is something I hold very near and dear to my heart (We're getting into life story territory now so if you don't have time to read this I understand lol). When I was in high school, I was a part of a super super toxic friend group and a super super toxic relationship. It was extremely dramatic and very traumatizing, and although I have pretty much fully recovered from it at this point it took me a long time and a lot of therapy to get there. I was pretty much gaslit for the entirety of my senior year, constantly being told my motivations weren't my own and pretty much acting as the general scapegoat for every bit of emotional trauma the group caused each other. People always love a common enemy, right? It got to the point where a girl I had been friends with since kindergarten told me that I was so good at manipulating the people around me that I had even manipulated myself into believing a lie, which is super disorienting and damaging and just awful in every way, now that I think about it. If you can't trust your own perspective, who can you trust?  
> It was important to me to show how Julie was able to function as a perfectly normal human being in the beginning of the story, dealing with the loss of her mom but learning to rekindle relationships with her family after she pulled away - and I hope I've made it clear that the events of this chapter are another reason why she became so good at running away to begin with. It's important to me to have made it clear that every decision she's made over the course of the story has been indirectly impacted by the trauma that she's faced. This will be the turning point: recognizing her insecurities and learning to deal with them for the first time.  
> I guess what I'm trying to say is, be nice to the people around you. Even if you don't see it, you never know what they're struggling with or how their past experiences have affected the way they see the world.  
> Also don't gaslight people or I when I die I will reject reincarnation or the afterlife or whatever just to haunt you for the rest of eternity lmao.
> 
> Please leave me a comment with your thoughts! I'd love to hear what you think about this chapter! Thanks for reading :)
> 
> PS. I got a tiktok and idk what I'm doing, but I post mediocre singing videos @caffeinecatastrophe if you're interested. Also come find me on tumblr! I love new friends :)


	8. So I Showed Up at Your Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *in the voice of Kristin Chenoweth as Maleficent* I'm BAAAAAAACK!
> 
> It's been over a month since my last update! I am so sorry for the delay. You'll be happy to hear that I have dealt with my life things and am back to writing regularly again! Thank you so much to all the lovely folks who sent me well wishes- I really appreciate your support.
> 
> If anybody is still actually reading this fic, here's a gift! A new chapter! This one's a little shorter than the others and I spent little to no time editing, so if there are mistakes or awkward phrasing please forgive me.

**19:00.**

“Excuse me ma’am, I’m in search of company from a fine woman, and I do believe you are the finest of them all," Alex appears at Julie’s side with an exaggerated Southern drawl, his eyes twinkling under the golden fairy lights that are strung across the canopy ceiling of Kayla’s family gazebo.

“You sound like Scarlett O’Hara, if she was a Muppet,” she tells him mildly, leaning back against one of the cedar railings that overlooks the garden. The soft plunking of a jazz pianist floats out from the glass doors that lead into the house, melding with the murmur of conversation from the other guests—parents and friends alike— scattered about the party.

Alex doesn’t take the bait, nudging her elbow with his own with a knowing twitch of the lips. “How’re you doing, love?”

She sighs, dropping her head onto his shoulder. “Better than him, I’ve heard.”

Alex’s answering hum rumbles in his throat above her head. “He’s always been an intense one, you know that. He’ll come around.”

“Did Reggie talk to you?” He doesn’t answer. She’ll take that as a resounding _yes._ “I did what I thought was best.”

“Sometimes,” Alex muses thoughtfully, looking down at the swirling mahogany of the wine glass between his fingers, “What’s best for the _maybe_ isn’t what’s best for you.”

She blinks, twisting her face to stare blankly at him. “That was super fucking cryptic, dude.”

He just fixes her with a broad grin, his blue eyes gleaming mischievously. “I was trying to be wise, you asshole.”

She snorts. “You’re worse than Carlos.”

“Take that back,” he whines with a mock faint, slumping over her shoulder and snickering loudly as she struggles under his dead weight.

“I’ll tell Willie on you,” she warns, trying (and failing miserably) to get him to stand up on his own two feet.

He gasps. “Don’t you _dare_.”

“Try me.”

“Rude,” he pouts, but he rights himself and takes another sip of his wine, of which, miraculously, not a single drop was spilled during their struggle. (Alex loves alcohol as much as Julie does. It’s one of the things she loves most about him.)

“Is he here?” the burning question slips from her lips before she can help it. She’s spent the last hour and a half pretending not to search for him out of the corner of her eye, but she hasn’t spotted him anywhere in the crowd, inside or out.

Alex studies her face for a moment. “He’s here,” he says quietly, “But I wouldn’t go poking the bear if I were you.”

She just slips out from where she’s been tucked against his side, patting him on the shoulder with an air of brazen confidence she isn’t sure she feels. “It’s Luke, Alex. When has he ever turned me down?”

She spots him across the living room as she slips through the sliding glass doors (seriously, Kayla’s parents’ house is fucking massive), nursing a short glass of some amber liquid and speaking stiffly with a short brunette that Julie vaguely recognizes from Carrie’s cheer squad back in the day. She’s been lucky tonight; she hasn’t had the unfortunate pleasure of running into her ex-best friend since she and Reggie arrived (it’s honestly kind of poetic, how two people who grew up in constant orbit of each other could somehow be so good at never meeting), but the mere sight of her old peers sets off a slow freeze in the pit of her stomach, the numbness spreading like a phantom bruise from her temples to the tips of her toes.

She sees him chuckle, and despite the minute reassurance she can offer herself at the clear distance he’s attempting to put between himself and the girl (Julie suddenly remembers sophomore year: a sheet of lined paper, folded thrice and shoved insistently into her front pocket. “Can you give this to Luke? It’s my number, so make sure he gets it!”) she can feel something dark and ugly slithering its way up the column of her throat.

He lifts his eyes— right into her watery gaze (and isn’t it cruel, that the universe insists on drawing them together no matter how many times they claw their way apart), and for a split second, nothing has changed— he’s Luke and she’s Julie and they always find their way back to each other—but then the moment breaks and he’s tearing his eyes away again, his face void of the familiar adoration she’s always had the privilege of receiving.

She’s starting to realize the nature of heartbreak lies not in the _leaving,_ but in the _letting go_ , because as much as she’s steeled herself to stomach the thought of _losing him_ she’s never considered the notion of _someone else’s gain_ —and suddenly she is seventeen again, spinning and nauseous and tearing at her gut from the inside out; suddenly she is balanced on the wing of an airplane, struggling to find some semblance of steady ground before the calm façade she’s plastered around every inch of her cracks apart in the one place she needs to keep it together—

There’s a warm hand on her arm. A sunny smile, a flash of sea green eyes. The panic pops like cabin pressure, and a familiar face is reeling her in for a one-armed hug.

“—to see you, Julie!” Nick looks the same as ever in his button down and skinny jeans, his eyes alight with the same warm innocence he’s always had.

“Nick! It’s good to see you too,” she stammers, trying not to sound as frantic as she feels, the tension in her limbs ebbing slowly away in the wake of a familiar presence.

Bystander to her trauma aside, Nick Danforth-Evans has always been kind to her.

They spend the next half hour catching up, exchanging horror stories of college professors and playing a quick round of “Who From Our Shitty High School Did What Stupid Thing While We Were Gone?”

She glances over his shoulder in the middle of his rant about the benefits of water and cereal for dinner (“I’m a broke college student, man, my roommate needs to stop fucking judging me for not being able to afford milk”), but Luke and Cheerleader Number Four are nowhere to be seen.

(She swallows the lump in her throat and tells Nick to replace the contents of his roommate’s milk jug with cornstarch and water the next time he starts being a dick.)

“So, this is a long time coming,” Nick fidgets awkwardly, toying with the cuff of his sleeve and shifting his weight nervously from side to side, “But I wanted to apologize for what happened back then. I should’ve stood up for you.”

She’s glad she hasn’t had the chance to get her hands on a drink, because the floor beneath them would definitely be a sea of red wine and shattered glass right about now.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she waves her hand, steeling her facial expression into something that is hopefully as flippant and pleasant as she thinks it is.

Her nerves are frayed enough as it is without dredging up old memories. Nick has always been kind, kind enough to apologize for an incident they both know he holds no real responsibility for, not when his girlfriend of three years is somewhere in this house, charging the air like a stick of dynamite with her very presence.

“She feels awful, you know,” he offers, the admission limp and pathetic in the hands of a gratuitous flag-bearer, and something cold and sharp sparks from the years-old ache in her chest.

“Should I send her flowers?” she quips sarcastically.

He shakes his head, blond hair whipping about his face, his bangs casting shadows that highlight the purple rings under his eyes. “Look, I know what she did to you wasn’t cool, but you guys have a lot of history. I think you need to talk it out if you’re ever going to move on—because frankly, we’ve known each other since we were fourteen and right now both of you look like you waded into a war at seventeen and just never came home.”

Something about the weary slump of his shoulders and the practiced articulation of his words makes her think this probably isn’t the first time he’s had to have this conversation tonight.

“I’m not saying you need to apologize first,” he amends with a shrug. “I just think if she comes to find you that you should hear her out.”

**20:00.**

She finds Carrie first, sitting on a weathered porch swing down at the edge of the garden, staring up at the cloudless night with her heels braced in the grass. She looks exactly like Julie thought she might if she moved to New York, fashionable and effortless and as comfortable in a sleek black dress and red lipstick as Reggie in leather and plaid, but Nick’s right— there’s something dry and haunted in the way she holds herself tonight.

Julie knows better than anyone in the world that Carrie Wilson isn’t perfect, but it’s still startling to see the plump line of her mouth contorted into a tense grimace instead of its usual practiced simper.

She’s digging her own grave, she knows. She could turn around right now and go back into the house, back into the open arms of her brothers before anyone notices she’s missing. But Nick is right, and Luke is right and maybe her brothers are a little bit right too, despite how much she loathes to admit it.

Julie is tired of running from her insecurities, so she’s here, where maybe the only person in the world whose opinion of herself matters more to her than her mother’s is sitting right in front of her.

“Mind if I join you?”

Carrie jumps in her seat, whirling around to face her with the air of a strung hen, the porch swing lurching forward with a groan as her feet lose their purchase against the lawn. Her eyes are slightly glassy (and for a second Julie worries she might be drunk, but her face is too pale and when they were fifteen Carrie snuck a single cider from her father’s stock and lit up like a firetruck), her eyeliner just slightly smudged against her lower lash line. She looks like the Carrie that Julie knows: messy and loud and half-fallen apart, and for a second Julie swears she can smell the sharpie, can see the glitter clung to the ends of her lashes.

They just stare at each other for what seems like hours. Julie wonders if Carrie can see her collarbone pulsing, if she can hear the sound of her heart hammering away at the shell of her chest.

“Yeah, I don’t mind,” Carrie’s voice is small and chapped, timid in a way Julie hasn’t heard since they were nine, since the night Carrie’s mom walked out on her dad (since the night Carrie’s mom didn’t ask Carrie to come with her) and never looked back.

(That was the summer of friendship bracelets, of the endless factory of distractions and rainbow thread and _don’t worry, wedding rings are ugly anyway, it’s a good thing you found your dad’s in the bathroom trash can because he saved himself from a fashion disaster.)_

She kicks off her sandals as she settles on the swing beside the other girl, tucking her feet under her and taking way too long to smooth out the hem of her skirt over her knees.

“Did Nick talk to you?” Carrie, ever the trailblazer, is first to break the awkward tension.

“Yeah.”

“Ah.”

They resume staring up at the sky, silent except for the muted buzz of the party that spills out across the lawn and the gentle creaking of the swing as Carrie rocks them absentmindedly.

When they were kids, they would lay out on the grass in the park with Julie’s mom, hand in hand while she taught them how to find the pictures hidden among the stars. Julie was only ever really good at picking out the simple ones, but Carrie fell in love with astronomy. She spent years pouring over star maps and textbooks and online tutorials for figuring out complicated calculations, as if somehow the outer cosmos could offer her answers that couldn’t be found here on earth.

(She painted Julie a map of Ursula Major for her thirteenth birthday, filling in the shape with various shades of purple so it looked like an actual bear—it was one of those constellations that Julie never could find on her own. She still has it, rolled up in an old mailing tube in the back of her bedroom closet in Vancouver.)

“I’m sorry,” Carrie whispers. They don’t look at each other, as if tearing their eyes away from the blanket of stars in front of them will be enough to break the simple peace.

“Why did you do it?” And that is the question, isn’t it? The one looming uncertainty Julie has never been able to sidestep with sarcasm and carefully timed jokes.

“I never—” her voice catches. Julie hears a shaky inhale, the sound of swallowing. “I never meant for it to go that far. The plan was for him to ask you out before Nick could get to you. Once I had gotten Nick to ask me, he was free to call it off with you whenever he wanted.”

“So you thought I would go out with Nick even though I knew how you felt,” she says flatly. She finds the trio of stars that mark Orion’s belt, and then moves on to trace the arrow of the Archer.

Carrie swallows again. “I thought maybe you had forgotten about how I felt.” And then, “I thought maybe you had forgotten about me.”

_“What?”_ Julie gives up on looking for Gemini, turning to face Carrie with an expression that is equal parts baffled and accusatory. “ _You’re_ the one who ditched _me!_ Who was the one that was always cancelling our plans for cheer practice, or shopping with the cheer squad, or another fucking ‘team only’ party?”

“And I tried to make it up to you!” Carrie retorts hotly, brown ringlets flying as she spins to meet her glare. “Do you know how many times I cancelled plans to hang out with you? How many times I felt like I didn’t belong in my own friend group because I was missing out on inside jokes? But you always had _band practice_ ,” she spits, “It’s like you were embarrassed to be seen with me!”

“I was embarrassed?” Julie hisses back, “You wouldn’t sit with me at lunch anymore! You literally pretended you didn’t see me!”

“You didn’t even tell me that your mom had cancer!” Carrie shrieks, and suddenly the night is very still.

Julie can hardly hear the sound of the party anymore, as if the garden itself is holding its breath.

“And I know what I did was awful, but you didn’t even invite me to the funeral yourself,” Carrie whispers.

(Julie remembers a thunderstorm, like the sky itself had split open, a gaping wound to embody the pain of a loss too great to comprehend. She remembers black dresses and muffled sobs and her dad in his wedding suit, weary and small and too thin to fill the shoulders. She remembers Carlos’ screams and Reggie’s arms and wishing Luke was here to hold her instead, and Alex, in the background, wiping Carrie’s tearstained face with uncharacteristic sympathy.)

Julie doesn’t know what to say.

“Look,” Carrie heaves out a heavy breath, finally kicking off her heels to mimic Julie’s position on the swing. Her posture seems lighter somehow (Julie realizes she’s probably been holding in that flare of hurt for years and has finally let it out). “I get it. You know that I, of all people, understand what it’s like to lose a mom—even if mine was shit and yours was really great.”

“Yours was shit,” Julie agrees wryly.

Carrie’s lips quirk upwards for a moment. “But I guess I thought, no matter how far apart we had grown, you would still come to me for stuff like that. And I guess I was really hurt that you didn’t seem to need me anymore.”

Julie’s spent the last week convincing her family to meet each other halfway, so she swallows her pride and lets go of the hurt, one by one: the guilt, and the anger, and the jealousy, and the spite—she lets the burden of an old ache finally bleed itself free.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, reaching out to pry Carrie’s white knuckles from the back of the swing seat. The familiar shape of her palm against her own is nostalgic, soothing away some of her anxiety with its steady grip. “I should’ve told you. I was just so wrapped up in life and the band and trying not to think about what was happening. I think maybe if I had told you it would’ve felt more real.”

“I should’ve stood up for you when Trevor said all that shit,” Carrie squeezes her hand fiercely, “I was just so caught off guard and it was in the moment and I was so mad at you—I just ran with it. But I fucked up. Everything he said was bullshit and wrong and I should’ve decked him out like Alex did the minute he opened his fat mouth.”

“Alex nearly fractured his hand doing that,” Julie snickers.

“Trevor deserved it,” Carrie snorts back.

They sit there, grinning at each other for a moment (and isn’t it fitting, that two people who spent so long in orbit away from each other could somehow find themselves meeting again on the other side).

“So we’re good?” Carrie ventures hesitantly.

Julie bumps her shoulder with her own. “We’re good.”

“Good.”

“How’s New York?”

“Loud,” Carrie laughs. “You’d hate it. How’s Vancouver?”

“Cold. Beautiful, but not home,” she admits. “You should visit.”

Carrie raises her eyebrows, not even bothering to hide the pleased smile that creeps across her face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She leans over to slump onto Julie’s shoulder, humming thoughtfully. “Maybe I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: I live for a Carrie Wilson redemption arc.
> 
> We're coming down to the finish line, folks! There's only a couple more chapters to go!
> 
> If you're interested in some more JATP content from me in between now and the next update, I've got a bunch of new multi-chap fics out, as well as a couple new oneshots!
> 
> Please drop me a comment letting me know your thoughts! They give me motivation to write <3


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